Victim of the Fall
by Pretty Desdemona
Summary: Hermione has found herself alone and friendless after the war, desperately attempting to combat her residual pain and terror as she returns to Hogwarts to complete her seventh year. The world is not what she had always thought it to be. Amidst confusion and loss, she finds herself on a quest for Truth, Joy, and Love. A Hermione-centric story
1. Chapter 1 - Sober

CHAPTER 1

SOBER

 _"_ _There's a shadow just behind me, shrouding every step I take, making every promise empty, pointing every finger at me."_

The aftermath of war is an indescribable thing. Giddy, yes, seasoned with relief and gratitude and a sort of bone deep lethargy that speaks of the need for a long, long rest. Coming down from a war is tiring work. But it is painful too, this much is obvious. The loss of life, love, and liberty inflicts wounds that penetrate far too deeply for peace alone to heal.

However, what may not be immediately obvious to those who have not experienced it is that the aftermath of war is frightening too. Because the terror that became such a daily part of one's emotional spectrum does not dissipate with the death of a villain. It must find new avenues through which to feel, experience, and explore the fear that has latched onto the psyche with no intent to let go. And if those avenues are not readily available in the physical world, then the mind will create them.

Hermione Granger was an intelligent young woman, and though her bookish tenacity and somewhat over serious demeanour was the characteristic most obvious in her interactions with the world, she also had the capacity for deep personal insight, as much as was possible for a woman of eighteen years. She knew this about herself.

She also knew that cleaning up the mess after a war was about more than just scrubbing blood off stone and attending funerals, commiserating with the survivors and attempting to forge a positive path together into the future. She knew that underneath it all was each individual's writhing emotional journey.

It had become slowly apparent to her that _her_ emotional journey through the frightening silence of a post-war wizarding England did involve the creation of threats that did not exist outside of her mind causing her to frequently experience sensations of panic and anxiety. And though she was painfully aware of this rapidly developing pattern, she found she could do very little about it. Her mind, it seemed, was thoroughly equipped with the tools to make her panic at entirely spontaneous moments, with what appeared to be no stimulus or motivation, but it was apparently not equipped to put a stop to this pattern or heal itself of that damage.

And so, she existed with an almost permanent hum of anxiety thrilling through her body. She found that every little thing frightened her into a maelstrom of over thinking and analysing and obsessing. But try as she might, she could not stop it. The thing she found hardest about all that however was not the effect it had on her personally, but the effect it had on those around her. She couldn't stand the idea of making others uncomfortable with her anxiousness. The thought alone bothered her almost as much as the anxiousness itself. She preferred to be alone.

Even here, sitting in the Weasley's garden on a warm summer afternoon, those feelings wouldn't leave her alone entirely. In that moment her strange and untameable mind seemed to be latched onto the idea that she may be silently passing on her anxieties through telekinesis alone to Mrs Weasley, who was sitting next to her at the wrought iron table, an idea she knew was entirely unreasonable, Mrs Weasley seemed completely oblivious to Hermione's mere presence beside her let alone her feelings, but her mind would just not let it be and picked at it ceaselessly like a child with a scab on its knee.

Beyond that, another far more important anxiety sat waiting quietly for her attention. The letter folded into a small, rough rectangle in her hand.

Hermione's eyes rested on the paper peaking from between her fingers as the warm summer breeze threatened to flick tendrils of her hair across her face. She began to nervously and unconsciously roll and fold the corners of the parchment.

This letter threatened to spill its one big question all over her life with every passing second, a question she couldn't bring herself to contemplate properly in that moment. It was better to simply put it out of her mind, to not think about it. Thus it was an anxiety that sat patiently waiting. She could not bring herself to put it down both physically and mentally. Her mind was both entirely focused upon it whilst also trying very hard to ignore it all together.

Hermione glanced to her left at Mrs Weasley who it appeared was also neglecting to watch the two aside match of Quidditch between Ron, Harry, Ginny and George being played above them. Her gaze was instead locked onto something in the distance and Hermione curiously followed it up onto the hill beside the Burrow. Through the glaring sunlight she could just make out a row of head stones peeking through the long grass. She looked away quickly, feeling the image burn itself onto her retinas. Blinking rapidly to remove it, she finally cast her eyes upwards to watch the match.

Harry was flying through the air, an old football tucked underneath his arm as Ron sped along behind him, clearly having difficulty keeping up. Harry pitched the ball at Ginny, who plucked it deftly from the air, launched it past George and through one of the hoops that had been charmed into hanging a few metres off the ground as their make-shift goal.

From where Hermione was sitting, she could see Ron's face turn a brilliant red and his mouth open angrily, but the wind blew his words away before they reached her. She felt the sun burn on her neck as the afternoon wore on and got to her feet, tucking the letter, now folded into a small square with corners tattered and soft, into her pocket. She turned to Mrs Weasley.

"It's too hot for me out here, Molly, I'm going inside. Do you need anything?" she asked, laying a hand lightly on Molly's shoulder.

Mrs Weasley started slightly, her eyes dazed and blank, and then said quietly, "No, no dear, I'm fine. I'll just get started on the weeding."

Hermione smiled and turned away, noting as she did that Molly made no move to leave her seat.

She made her way into the kitchen, past the old cauldrons and wellington boots scattered around the Burrow's back door, and stopped to run her hand distractedly over the stained and deeply scratched wood of the dining table, a constant reminder of the past and all those that had been lost to the war. She could hardly see how the Weasleys could stand to have it in the house. Molly had always encouraged friends of the family to mark the wood in some way, to carve a symbol or initial into it. It was, she had once described it, a constant and beautiful work of art that reminded her of the many friendships that held her family together, a work of art never to be finished and always ready for a new inscription.

Hermione knew those marks well now; she had sat at the table so often. A lighting shape had been engraved in front of the seat Harry generally occupied, and a snitch beside it etched by Ginny. An untidy scrawl read _Professor Rubeus Hagrid_ along the table's left edge near the words ' _wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure'_ , though Hermione did not know who had inscribed the latter. Ron had written his own name on the corner if the table, and presumably Fred and George had been the ones to add _ickle_ and _ickens_ before and after it, much to Ron's indignation. A large _Padfoot_ had been carved by Sirius in the middle accompanied by Remus's addition of _Moony_. Those were among the ones that made Hermione's heart ache just a little. But the inscription that gave her the most pain was one barely noticeable unless you knew where to find it. The little scratched triangle with a circle and a line down the middle that looked a bit like a tiny eye, carved deep into the wood of the table leg, right down near the floor. She knew that this was a mark left by Dumbledore.

Even the thought of it sent a momentary thrill of resentment towards her old headmaster rush through her body. She had devoted years to believing him infallible and all-knowing, to _trusting_ him, and he had betrayed them all with his secrets and manipulations. She knew, deep down, that his actions were somewhat justifiable and that his justification had been good enough for Harry, but it hurt her knowing how many things Dumbledore had never told them, information that might have helped, might have made something that was already painfully hard just that little bit easier. She'd always thought he was a genius, _brilliant but mental_ as Ron used to say; now however she knew him to be just as manipulative, close minded, and in some ways elitist as Tom Riddle. Both men were paradoxes. Idiots with too much information at their disposal.

Hermione let her fingers trail over the wood of the table as she made her way around it to sit heavily in one of the chairs. It was not so much the list of names of the dead that was present with her all the time, but the feeling of death itself, the feeling of loss. It could be said that she lost no one in the war with whom she had a terribly deep bond, unlike Harry who had lost three of the greatest mentors in his life in Sirius, Remus, and Dumbledore, or Ron who had lost a brother. But the feeling of loss, of all the people who had died whom she could claim a friendship or acquaintance, even those whose names she did not know, that feeling was always with her. It was omnipresent, everywhere.

Even the deaths of those whom she cordially disliked, such as Severus Snape, were difficult for her to process. Although she did not think very much of her old potions master, no matter what Harry had said about his allegiances and his bravery, she would have liked to come out of the final battle and shake his hand all the same; would have liked to have talked to him, see what he was like without the spectres of Voldemort and Dumbledore hovering over his life.

In the end, it all came down to the simple fact that deep down, she could hardly believe that it was all really over. She still expected some great and unnameable evil threatening the lives of everyone she loved to emerge from the background. Another Dark Lord. And then the battle would begin again. They would all have something to consume them again, something to care about. She felt a great concern for all the people left behind, the world just didn't feel right, didn't feel full anymore. There was something wanting and she could see it in the faces of everyone around her.

Nothing was the same. Intellectually, she had always known, even in the hours after the final battle, that it wouldn't be but the differences as she experienced them day by day were drastic and scary no matter how prepared for them she had thought herself to be.

Those differences lay, for the most part, in the people around her as much as within herself.

Harry could only be described as scattered and changeable. Some days he seemed happy, unencumbered to the point of jovial, and relatively optimistic. On others however a deep and consuming depression seemed to weigh him down and on those days it was difficult to get a word out of him. His energy of sadness would hang heavily over the house like the grey of an overcast day when he was down, and every single one of its occupants would be affected by it.

Ceaselessly Ginny would hover around him, tending to his every whim, rejoicing over-enthusiastically when he was happy and coddling him to the point of madness when he was down. She moved through the house with a kind of wounded strength, like a prospective martyr on the way to the stake waiting for a reprieve from god. Once upon a time Hermione had seen her as strong and independent; but now she had taken on an over bearing motherly role within the family; trying, resolutely, to remain the omnipresent pillar of strength to what was left of the people she loved. Ginny was affected now. She no longer danced to her own tune but to the tune of everyone else's grief.

Hermione found her wearing at the best of times, but she could acknowledge that there must always be a mother in the Weasley household, that was the way that they had been brought up, and Mrs Weasley was not fulfilling the role.

Molly's grief manifested itself into confusion and disorder. She would often speak to people who weren't there, she would re-wash dishes she had washed only minutes earlier, and repeatedly she had asked Ron, Harry, and Hermione when they would like to go to Diagon Alley to pick up their school things. Whenever any of them had reminded her that there was no school anymore she would simply reply, "Oh nonsense!" and go back to sitting in the garden, staring up at the hill beside the house.

Her husband very clearly had no idea how to deal with her, though he tried. Arthur had always been unendingly kind and that kindness continued in his treatment of his wife. But Hermione could see that through his own obsessive need to bring justice to the remainder of Voldemort's followers and the consequential time he spent at work, it was just a matter of his finding it easier to be obsessive than to be depressed as well as ignoring the greater problem that awaited him at home for Molly's state of mind was obviously distressing to him.

Understandably, their sons were as lost and messy as they were.

George was a shadow of his former self, often to be seen walking through the hills around their home, hands deep in his pockets, speaking aloud to his dead twin as if he were still strolling along beside him. He was a quintessential example of numbness. He smiled, but there was no light. He frowned, but there was no storm. He was blank. Somehow though, Hermione felt that George was not hopeless. There was something about his grief that encouraged her, as if he was experiencing that grief purely, not letting his mind run wild with anxiety and insecurity and anger the way the rest of them had. It seemed to be George's intent to feel the loss of his twin fully and completely with no concern for those around him. Hermione could see that there was an inherent selfishness to this, but she admired him for it and couldn't help feeling that he was going about things the right way.

Ron however, was almost the opposite. He was never properly cheerful but at the same time, he seemed less down trodden than the rest of the family. In fact, we was entirely numbed. When Hermione looked at him she could see guilt, pain, and fear repressed. His eyes were blank and cold. Whenever she noticed a rare smile light up his face, she watched as it faltered, could tell that he was internally reminding himself that smiling was not allowed now. Ron seemed to be in some kind of manic denial, he didn't want to participate in the emotional turmoil gripping his family, but at the same time could not disengage from it. Privately, she thought of this as Ron trying to do it the man's way. Just harden up and move on and ignore all the bits and pieces that have to be there in order for the moving on to happen.

Hermione wondered briefly if maybe the dead were the lucky ones. Were there pieces to pick up in the afterlife? Because the amount that had to be done in the real world appeared to be far too much for those left behind.

Being with herself these days was very hard, but Hermione was beginning to see that being around all this sadness and silence was another thing entirely.

Sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at her hands, she felt entirely at a loss. She could see very clearly that everyone around her was in a great deal of pain, but for once no book could help her. She ached to fix, to mend, but had no idea where to start. There was no talking happening in the Burrow anymore and something was telling Hermione that communication had to be the right place to begin. But really, she didn't entirely know if she had the motivation to start to encourage the others to be vulnerable and unburden themselves of their inner troubles.

It was a strange place to be in, cultivating both the fierce and huge desire to help whilst also feeling as if helping was all too much and that she might not be up to it.

The reality was, of course, that she wasn't. But this was such an unpalatable idea that she just couldn't acknowledge it, because ultimately Hermione felt entirely without options and attempting to somehow help the people around her seemed like the one and only path before her.

It frightened her though, how the future seemed in her mind. If she was honest, things had been on an increasingly quick downward trajectory since the end of the war, and she couldn't see how they could all simultaneously pull themselves out of that nose dive together.

Over the days after the final battle, the collective mood had been euphoric and manic and desperate. It had been _everything_. She had felt such a wide and colourful array of emotions that it was almost difficult to remember the events that had followed with any real clarity. Mostly, she remembered feeling confused and overwhelmed. She had wanted desperately to sleep and be alone, she had wanted to hug Harry, she had wanted to fuck Ron, she had wanted to curse everyone in the vicinity, all at once. But instead, she had laughed and cried and toasted the dead and the living and simply _lived_ _through_ the overwhelming hugeness of her reality. It was awful and terrifying but she had, at the very least, things to do, other things to focus on. She had ridden the feeling until her bones ached and her eyes refused to stay open any longer, by simply never allowing herself to be directionless or without occupation.

The only moment of silence she had really allowed herself was in the first hours after the battle had ended. Harry had disappeared very quickly once all the hand wringing, hugging, drinking, eating, and congratulations were done with. Hermione and Ron had followed soon after, dragging their feet through the rubble, hand in hand, up to the Gryffindor tower. When they stepped into the boy's dormitory together, Harry had looked so vulnerable and hurt in his sleep that Hermione had climbed in beside him without thought. He looped his hand over her hip sleepily as she pressed her back to his chest and Ron slipped under the covers in front of her, pulling her arm over him.

There was silence in that moment, but love too, which made all else small in comparison and made the silence ok. She had allowed herself to simply feel safe enough to sleep between the two men in the world she loved the most.

Their rest though was of course only brief for the noise reverberating from the Great Hall was a constant, distracting hum.

The three of them, the Golden Trio, had been there at Hogwarts until there was nothing more to do, the sick and the wounded were taken care of, and the dead were dealt with respectfully. Then, they had beat the familiar path down to Hogsmeade, outside of the Hogwarts boundaries, and apparated directly back to the Burrow. Immediately its usual atmosphere of busyness and activity absorbed them.

She knew vaguely at the time that the only reason everyone was so loud, the only reason they rushed around was because they didn't want to stay still or quiet for long enough to let reality sink in. And that method had worked while it lasted. Hermione participated in it wholeheartedly and with noticeable enthusiasm.

Every night Hermione had gone to bed exhausted and utterly drained having spent her days with Harry, the Weasleys, and any guests that happened to pass through, consumed by the planning and talking, crying and comforting. They commiserated with one another through the funerals and while the assets of the dead were dealt with. They all made it through that difficult time with what Hermione thought was a great deal of grace and strength. But she remembered vividly the morning they all woke to find that the harshest reality had not yet come crashing down on any of them entirely.

It was the quiet, the silence of that day, and every day that passed afterwards, that undid them all. Every letter that required writing had been sent, every story that could be shared had been expressed, every apology that could be offered had been said, and everything that needed to be dealt with had been dealt with.

The silence had lasted for three months. It had gotten heavier and quieter with every passing hour as the manifestations of grief had begun to bloom into being within all of them, becoming more potent and apparently permanent all the time. It had all become almost normal to Hermione, the routines that they had all fallen into in their own profound sadness as much as each other's. It was almost normal and Hermione hated it, loathed feeling so stuck and so thoroughly without hope for the future.

It hit her like an epiphany then, as her fingers traced nervous patterns on the scratched table top, the realisation that she could not continue to exist in this state, in this house, with these people, no matter how much she cared for them and wanted to help them.

The letter in her pocket seemed to burn, the letter from McGonagall offering Hermione a place at Hogwarts this year. She realised that she might just have to accept that offer and leave the Burrow. It was finally a question that required serious thought; she couldn't ignore it any longer.

It was in those first weeks that the idea of going back to Hogwarts for another year had first begun to be spoken about. McGonagall had offered them all place and Ginny, Harry, Ron, and Hermione swapped opinions on the proposal for some time. Harry and Ron seemed to feel put off by the idea, they appeared to feel they were ready for the world and wanted to step out and explore it. There then followed many fanciful conversations between the four of them about where they could all go, how they'd get there and what they'd do.

The way they had all changed and how thoroughly the atmosphere in the Burrow had altered made it hardly believable that they'd ever shared such light hearted, hope filled conversation together.

Hermione missed it all so desperately.

It was part of what made each day so hard was how toxic and silent her relationships had become. How could she not live in a state of almost permanent anxiety when she was frightened every time she spoke to Harry, even about surface stuff, that she might trigger him into some kind of mood? When Ron would barely look at her, let alone have a conversation with her?

Hermione realised that if she didn't get out and help herself, there was no helping anyone. And even if she had no idea at all what helping herself looked like, she had to try. The first step to that trying began with her disentangling herself from the Burrow, pulling herself out of its web of grief.

New possibilities began to bloom in Hermione's mind as the thought of freedom began to properly settle in. And in her enthusiasm for it she forgot to feel guilty or ashamed or worried for a moment.

McGonagall had made it clear in her letter that Hermione had choices, something that Hermione herself had not fully realised or felt until that very second. The Headmistress had said that if Hermione did not wish to remain at the Burrow she could return to her residency at Hogwarts _or_ that McGonagall would help her to find other accommodation wherein Hermione could live on her own.

The latter idea held great appeal to her. The idea of being able to live, day to day, without the worry of how her feelings were affecting others, without the concern over their state of mind, without having to hear their opinions on her choices, was so tempting it almost made her mouth water.

She found herself then becoming completely caught up in the fantasy of it. It was only just becoming apparent to her how much she had craved silence of a different kind to the sort she had become so very accustomed to.

Her and Crookshanks _alone_. How blissful that sounded.

Reading in the morning sunlight without risk of interruption. Cooking sumptuous meals for herself, eating what she wanted. Cups of tea in the middle of the night. Practicing new spells, brewing new potions. Loud, self induced orgasms that she could take hours and hours to build up to. Pursuing hobbies that her life had thus far never had room for like drawing or painting or writing. Takeaway at three in the morning. Following any vague inclination that may come upon her at any given time.

It all sounded so wonderful. She couldn't see any possible down side, the fantasy induced tunnel vision was so complete.

Harry wandered through the kitchen door at that moment, interrupting her dreaming. His face was flushed and glowing from the exercise of the match and he grinned at Hermione as he made his way over to the sink to fill up a glass of water. He felt good that day.

"What's up with you?" he asked breathlessly, in between gulps.

She realised suddenly that he had happened upon her standing with her palms pressed against the table, breathing heavily and realised that it must have looked odd. She sunk back into her chair looking a little embarrassed.

"You know you could just use _Aguamenti,"_ she said distractedly, nodding towards his glass.

He grinned again and shrugged, wiping his sweaty forehead on his sleeve. "Yeah I know. Force of habit I guess."

Hermione gave a feeble laugh and fell silent. Harry frowned slightly. "You alright?" he asked.

"Yes!" she replied with a little too much enthusiasm, "Yes I'm fine. Really."

Harry raised an eyebrow and went to sit beside her at the table.

"What's wrong, Hermione?" he asked, his voice concerned.

Hermione watched as the condensation on Harry's glass formed droplets that sunk slowly down to the table where the wood almost immediately absorbed it. She took a deep breath in an attempt to still some of the excitement beating away in her chest.

"I don't know," she said, "I was just thinking about this."

She reached into her pocket for the letter, opening and smoothing it out before sliding it toward Harry. He glanced down at it quickly and then back at her.

"What about it?" he was trying to sound non-committal but Hermione could hear the underlying anxiety in his voice. It occurred to her that perhaps he too was nervous about his own letter and possible return to Hogwarts.

"Oh you know, just where I'll live, how I'll pay for everything… That sort of thing," she pulled a hair band from around her wrist and tied her hair up into a pony tail as she spoke, her tone preoccupied.

"Well," he said slowly, looking as if he was trying to work something out in his head, "You've got plenty of savings in Gringotts since people were so generous with us after the war... And as for where you'd live, I don't see why you shouldn't stay on here."

"What if I don't want to stay on here though?" Hermione asked, quietly relishing being able to speak to Harry like they were friends again.

To her surprise though, Harry looked hurt. "Why wouldn't you want to?"

She began to feel a little uncomfortable. There had been so many realisations within the last few minutes alone that she had no idea where to start or if she was even finished processing them herself yet. She did not feel prepared to go on and try to explain them all to Harry. However, she'd have to say something.

"Well, this _was_ always going to be temporary, wasn't it Harry? I mean, we all talked about going travelling or something, and I know going back to Hogwarts isn't globetrotting, but it's something..."

"Yeah, yeah, I get that," said Harry, sounding frustrated, "I'm not struggling to understand why you're going back to Hogwarts. I mean, I have actually met you, Hermione. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out. What I don't get is why you're thinking of leaving _here_."

"Don't you think it would be nice to... to have your own flat or something?" Hermione responded feebly.

Harry shrugged, "Seems a pretty weak reason to pack up and leave everything that's going on here, doesn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

He fixed her with a rather intense and serious look and leant forward on the table, "Don't you think you're needed here? Wouldn't it be a bit slack to abandon everyone like that just because the idea of living on your own is just sort of nice?"

Hermione began to feel the creeping sensation of guilt and embarrassment welling up in her chest.

"I mean," Harry continued, "If you left, it would just upset the balance of things wouldn't it? We've all got a kind of routine around each other, haven't we? And if we mess with that, it's very probable that we'll just make everything worse."

"Yes, yes, you're right," said Hermione, nodding. Harry's tone sounded so earnest and serious she felt compelled to understand and agree with him.

Hermione realised then how very long it had really been since she and Harry had actually had a proper conversation, exchange words with one another that held more meaning than _I'm going for a walk_ or _pass the salt_ or _is Ginny finished in the bathroom_. She realised that it had been a long time for all of them. They hadn't actually talked about anything real in months.

It also occurred to her how different Harry was. It didn't seem quite in line with his character to be so... so thoroughly convincing or eloquent. The Harry she'd known was always sort of bumbling and sincere. The way he was talking just didn't sound quite like him.

As a result of this, something within her bristled as she began to feel slightly manipulated.

After a long silence wherein Harry stared intently at her and Hermione looked uncomfortably at the table, she said, "But what if we all _need_ some shaking up? What if all this just isn't going well? What if change is the answer?"

A look of anger flashed across his face. "The answer to what exactly?"

"To... to all our problems."

"What problems?"

Hermione let out a scoff and looked at him bemusedly. " _What_ problems? Seriously Harry, you can't possibly think that any of us are doing particularly well..."

"I think we're doing fine," he responded through gritted teeth.

She frowned. More than anything, she didn't want to fight with him, but it felt like he was intent on heading in that direction if she disagreed with him and the only way to avoid a fight was to tell him she'd stay. She felt trapped in a corner and it was this feeling that led her to her following actions.

She stood up and with a shaking voice said, "Look, I've made up my mind. I want to leave here, I want to have a life again, I want..."

Harry cut her off with a scalding laugh, "Yeah, it's all about what _you_ want, isn't it?"

She faltered and frowned, "Well no, it's not so much about what I want as what I _need_ , I just..."

He cut her off again and stood, "Spare me."

At that moment Ron, Ginny and Fred ambled into the kitchen. Hermione cringed, knowing that it was obvious her and Harry were having a conflict and hating that they had to bear witness to it. Harry on the other hand, seemed pleased.

"Hermione's leaving," he announced to them in a voice laden with judgment.

"What?" asked Ginny, looking bemused.

"Apparently we're all too much to handle," Harry told them, "A burden getting in the way of her glamorous ambitions."

"Harry!" exclaimed Hermione, shocked, "I didn't say any of that! I only said I..."

"Whatever!" shouted Harry over the top of her.

Hermione looked to Ron in mute appeal but he avoided her eyes, slouching in the back doorway sullenly. George stood in front of him looking utterly and completely bewildered. Hermione turned to Ginny who hovered between herself and Harry. There seemed to be some sort of internal battle happening behind her eyes as she looked between her partner and her friend. Hermione knew that the battle was about whether to go with the side of reason and side with Hermione, or placate Harry by siding with him. She also knew which decision Ginny would come to and was not wrong. The younger woman moved to stand by Harry, fixing her face with an accusatory glare.

"Look," Hermione tried to explain, "McGonagall wrote to me and offered to help me find a flat for myself and it just sounds so nice... I'd love to get back into my studies and just forget about... about the war and everything that happened and..."

She trailed off, knowing that she had committed the ultimate crime by mentioning the forbidden topic of the war. The faces looking at her reflected this. Ginny and Harry looked outraged and Ron seemed to stiffen more, still refusing to look Hermione in the eye. George however continued to look bewildered.

"Ok, I'm just... I'm just going to go..." said Hermione weakly, beginning to turn away.

Harry laughed loudly and harshly, throwing his hands in the air and turning away from her.

"What, now?" asked Ginny, her voice torn between forced anger and total confusion.

"Yes..." Hermione responded unsteadily, "I'll go to the Leaky Cauldron while I wait for McGonagall to find me somewhere to live."

She didn't know where this plan was coming from. She had, after all only just made the decision to leave, why had it suddenly become so urgent that she do so? She could not place it but she just had this deep, deep feeling of unease suddenly. She wanted to be away from them all, from the familiar scents and scenes of the Burrow, she _needed_ to get out. The very idea of staying any longer suddenly filled her with a palpable panic.

Hermione turned on her heel and it was all she could do not to take the stairs two at a time up to Ginny's old room. Once inside, she closed the door hastily behind her and paced backwards and forwards, picking up bits and pieces of her possessions that were scattered about and hurled them unceremoniously into her old and dilapidated beaded bag, trying all the while to ease to anguish she felt in the aftermath of the confrontation.

She and Harry had not fought like that in all the time they had been living under the same roof and it seemed obvious to Hermione that Harry's temper came from her intention to bring change into his life by leaving. He clearly feared it and, much like her, wished things could remain the same simply because it felt safer. But unlike her, Harry had not experienced the same epiphany and was not driven to leave through the sheer force of his self preservation. Hermione did wish she could stay and it was almost tempting for her to do so, it felt easier, but she knew deep within herself that she just couldn't. Over the past half an hour that knowledge had solidified in her mind like concrete. She would not be swayed.

It took her the better part of an hour to pack her bag and collect her belongings from around the now silent house and she ran into none of the family as she did so, something she was grateful for.

With the packing done, Hermione left through the back door and made her way over to Molly who was still seated in the garden.

"Molly?" she said quietly, laying a hand on the older woman's shoulder.

"Yes dear?" said Molly, turning to look at her with dazed eyes.

"I'm... I'm leaving for Hogwarts now," she told her, wishing with all her heart that she could explain her abrupt departure more fully but knowing that Mrs Weasley did not have the mental capacity to understand her in that moment.

"Oh, yes of course," said Molly, "Have you got all your school things?"

"Yes."

"And you're all packed?"

"Yes."

"And how will you be getting there?"

"I'll be apparating."

"Good, good."

"Thank you for everything, for letting me stay here and..."

The older woman patted Hermione's hand. "It was lovely having you. Give my best to Dumbledore."

Hermione nodded mutely, her hearted beating rapidly in her chest. She turned away and begun striding toward the back gate.

It felt as if her life was suddenly cascading her in a direction she was not ready for, as if this one choice, the choice to leave, was changing the shape of everything; her relationships, her view of herself, and her future. She didn't know if she could handle it. Hermione realised that the past few months had slowly pushed her into a quiet sort of numbness. Tears that had still not spilt from her eyes were long overdue and the pain and shame she now felt were as foreign to her as another country.

It suddenly became very real how frightened of Harry she had been feeling, walking on eggshells, terrified of saying the wrong thing, and how her and Ron had become so distant where once they had been as close as two people could be. Before that day, before the choice had been made, she realised she'd been lying to herself, quite possibly too caught up in her own anxieties to notice how bad it had really gotten for them all.

She saw now how wrong that had been, how she had privately judged everyone around her for their grieving processes because she had simply chosen not to have one. Instead, her mind had conjured for her the anxiety and panic attacks she had been experiencing in order to deal with the overwhelming fear and pain she really felt.

In that moment, as she her hands landed on the back gate and pushed it open, Hermione fully felt how terrifically frightened she was of life now, how lost she felt, and how her feeling of being entirely without hope hadn't come from those around her, it had come from within.

She wanted to turn back and apologise to them all for how messy it was ending and how bad it had all turned out, but her fear was guiding her footsteps away and that was far stronger than her desire to stay.

The guilt burned in her chest when she thought of Harry, her best friend, broken and disabled as he was becoming and she almost regretted what she had said and what she was about to do. But the detached and logical part of her mind swiftly reminded her that she had to care for herself, that she needed to ensure her own survival before she worried about his, or she would be entirely useless to him.

She would come back to Harry, to them all, and she would help. And that promise to herself, made as she reached the Burrow's magical boundary, was the only thing that could convince her to leave at all.

Just as she was about to turn herself into darkness however, she heard a voice calling her name and spun around to see Ginny running towards her, red hair flying in the wind.

"Hermione!" she called, breathless as she came to a standstill, "You're really leaving now?"

"Yes," answered Hermione shortly.

"Why?" Ginny's voice was confused.

"I just have to," Hermione told her.

"But... but everything was fine before today! Everything was great!" Ginny exclaimed.

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Really? Was everything really fine?"

"Yes..." the younger woman answered, yet her tone was laced with uncertainty.

Hermione fixed Ginny with a hard look. "Be honest, Ginny. You're mum can barely keep two thoughts in her head, George is a husk of a person, your dad is hardly in the house and when he is he's clearly really depressed, Ron won't show an ounce of emotion in either direction to anyone, and Harry is nearly clinically insane with his mood swings. And to top it all off, none of us speak to each other anymore! What about any of that is fine?"

"But that's normal after... after everything."

"Really?! It's been over three months since the final battle and everything's only gotten worse! I'm sorry but I've got to go. I just can't be in it anymore."

"But what about Ron? You two are in love, how can you just walk away from him?" Ginny demanded, and Hermione could see that she was beginning to get angry.

Her heart constricted at the thought of Ron, a herald of the pain she knew would soon crash over her at the disintegration of their relationship, a fact that she hadn't allowed herself to acknowledge at all.

"Ron hasn't touched me in months, Ginny," she said sadly, "He can't even look at me. And..." her voice cracked, "He hasn't come out to stop me, has he? He doesn't care that I'm leaving. In fact, I'd say he's probably glad of it."

The younger woman looked sad and seemed lost for words. Hermione took advantage of this lull in conversation.

"Look, I've got to leave. I've just got to. I'm sorry."

And with that, she turned on the spot and the suffocating darkness engulfed her.

A/N: So here it is beautiful ones, the first chapter of the new and improved version of Victim of the Fall! I was so grateful for all your words of encouragement and congratulations in your reviews, thank you.

There were more changes here than I had originally anticipated but it's opening my eyes to the new and wonderful directions this story can take. I'm loving being back in this flow again, back in a world that I love, with a story that is so close to my heart.

Hoping you're loving this as much as I am.

Always,

Desdemona


	2. Chapter 2 - When I Grow Up

CHAPTER 2

WHEN I GROW UP

 _"_ _On the seventh day I rest for a minute or two, then back on my feet to call for you."_

When the blackness of apparition released her, Hermione found herself standing in the dark, rain sodden courtyard behind the Leaky Cauldron, reeling a little. She hastily threw herself underneath the building's eaves in an attempt to stay dry but the rain was pounding so heavily on the flagstones in front of her that she was quickly drenched. Yet though her feet had brought her to a cover that was so inadequate, she found she could not move.

In that moment, it seemed impossible to do so and she realised that a change was manifesting in her mind and in her body that demanded a moment of her time.

It was as if a huge, wet blanket were being lifted off of her emotional body. Suddenly, the painfully quiet numbness and confusion she had fallen into over the past few months were entirely gone and her emotions, spawning from not only the memories of the war but also the disintegration of her relationships with Ron and, to a lesser extent, Harry and Ginny, were like an open wound, bleeding copiously, burning with agonising freshness.

This sudden onslaught was so thoroughly unexpected and confronting that it was almost a living entity, a monolithic, dark figure looming in front of her, rushing towards her with all the speed of an oncoming train, unstoppable and ferocious.

And Hermione could do nothing but stand in a kind of awe as she observed its imminence. Her mind barely had a moment to question this thing, barely had a second to understand where it had been before this very moment, and why this setting, the rain, the Leaky Cauldron, had brought about the ideal opportunity for its attack.

What had really changed?

Everything this thing represented had been present in her life for some time, so why now? What had happened?

Then, the demon embraced her.

For a few moments, the intensity of her feeling was almost as suffocating as apparition. There was no breath in her body, her chest was tight with grief, the full force of her fear and despair were pounding down on her from above, physically causing her body to bow and constrict until she was crouched, and hugging her knees on the wet and dirty flagstones. The physical effect of it was almost comparable to a panic attack, but somehow it tasted different because the fear itself was lacking. This sensation was pure emotion, and so many that they were almost impossible to distinguish from one another, but fear and panic were certainly not among them.

And then, like thick smoke dispersing in a soft but persistent wind, the demon released her and she stood.

It seemed as if the air flowing in and out of her lungs in deep gasps was somehow cleaner, colder, more refreshing than any she had been breathing before.

Yes, the enormous wave of feeling had passed, but Hermione remained entirely altered from the woman she had been at the Burrow. There was something new happening within her. The numbness was not returning. Though the initial wave of emotion had now cascaded over her she realised that those feelings were still very much flowing, like a burst dam returning a river to its native course.

Notably bewildered and confused, shaking and feeling weak, Hermione gathered herself and rushed into the warm, busy noise of the Leaky Cauldron to book herself a room.

It took several days for Hermione to stop reeling from what she had felt upon her arrival, the experience had left her feeling weak and shaky. Still, she had waited for the old numbness and anxiety to return, but it didn't. She found it exhausting to be so thoroughly present with her emotions all the time, present to the dysfunctional obsessive thinking about Ron and the pain of his distance and indifference that had set in over the past days. Numbness, though it was heavy and kept her foggy, was certainly easier than this sudden onslaught of total awareness and feeling. It was hard not to write to him, hard not to return to the Burrow to initiate some sort of reconciliation. It took up all of her focus.

The obsession had crept up on her so quietly that it took her entirely by surprise. It hadn't occurred to her before she'd left that there'd be this particular kind of fallout.

Many times during her stay at the Leaky Cauldron, Hermione paced her room alone and spoke aloud as if Ron were there, rehearsing all of the things she wanted to say to him that she had felt too numb or too frightened to voice before. It struck her often how crazy this behaviour must be, but it was the only thing that kept her sane. Every waking moment she thought about Ron, every moment she wanted to return to the Burrow to initiate something, she didn't know what, just something that would mean that she didn't have to go through what she was experiencing now.

What stopped her from actually going through with that plan was the constant terror that Ron would reject her in exactly the same way he had been rejecting her every day for the past months. If she could only be sure that he would talk to her, yell at her, hug her, cry at her, whatever, if she could only be sure that he would _react_ then she might have gone through with it. Unfortunately it felt far more likely that Ron would treat her return with nothing more than cold indifference, just as he had treated her departure.

It was an exhaustive process, being unable to satisfy her yearning for contact only because of her fear of it, like she was being pulled painfully in two separate directions.

Hermione felt sure that the mess she saw in the mirror every day was the same mess others saw when they looked at her when she went down into the pub for dinner or to pay for another night's lodgings. She wasn't messy in the sense that she was crying and screaming, curled into a ball unable to move, crippled by depression; she was messy in that she didn't know what to do with herself, couldn't sit still, couldn't keep her mind still, and felt like every moment her whole being was crawling, mind and body. Somehow that sort of messy felt so much realer, so much more insane than anything else.

Because of this, the week she spent at the Leaky Cauldron before McGonagall was able to find her suitable accommodation was difficult and fraught with the constant tension Hermione found herself embodying every day.

She could only try to convince herself that once she was set up in a place of her own, away from other people, everything would even out, she would have the opportunity to begin to feel ok again. So, when the day came for her to inspect her prospective new home, she felt nothing but relief.

McGonagall met her that sunny autumn morning at the top of Diagon Alley so that the two of them might see the flat together. As Hermione approached, she felt her Headmistress's eyes scrutinising her.

"Hermione," said McGonagall by way of greeting.

"Professor," Hermione smiled in response.

"How are you?"

There was an uncomfortable pause between this question and her response as she tried to decide the best way to reply to a query with so many varying answers.

"I'm alright," was the somewhat anticlimactic response she chose, accompanied by a strained smile. Seeing someone familiar made her feel like her insides were quivering.

McGonagall nodded curtly. "I can imagine. Well, shall we?" she gestured down the street.

"Are we not apparating?" Hermione asked bemusedly.

"There will be no need for that," answered McGonagall, "I have found you a flat above Flourish and Blotts, I felt it would suit better. And to be frank I did not like the idea of your being isolated somewhere unfamiliar to you."

Hermione felt a different kind of quivering, a thrill of happiness, and thanked her Headmistress profusely. She could barely believe her good fortune at being able to live surrounded by books, those things that she loved so thoroughly. It was a welcome break from her obsessive thinking.

McGonagall smiled good naturedly at Hermione's enthusiastic gratitude. "Let's not get too ahead of ourselves shall we? We must first determine that the place is not in total disrepair."

Hermione felt she would hardly care if it was.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence as they began to walk at a gentle pace down the busy street. Hermione's gaze explored the scene thoroughly as she had not had the courage to venture there during her stay at the Leaky Cauldron. She was struck by the strangeness of it all, how different Diagon Alley was to what it had been the last time she had set foot there when many of the shops had been boarded up and witches and wizards had been slumped in their doorways, begging for wands. That incarnation of the usually busy and bright street had felt ruthless and terrifying.

Sometimes, Hermione had awful premonitions of what the world might have been like if they hadn't defeated Voldemort. And the image of Diagon Alley the last time she had been there, dark, unsafe, and unforgiving, always preceded them. She couldn't possibly imagine what actually living in a world that was so constantly and thoroughly terrifying, controlled, and cold would be like in its reality. During the war, there had been something to fight for, no one was winning or losing, the sole focus was entirely on the battle they waged for their rights and for their lives. But if they'd lost, if Harry had died, Voldemort's ideals of darkness and control would have stretched across decades, across generations. She had found it hard enough _fighting_ that darkness, but imagine _living_ in it?

The thought frightened her even now that the war was won. Voldemort stood for all the most evil things in the world, war, murder, rape, indoctrination, and hatred; and for that she ultimately pitied him. Like any human being who had been turned down a path of anger and pain, like any drug addict, like any man who hit his wife or any mother that neglected her children, the Dark Lord was ultimately brought up by a system that let him down. The fact was that the system, their society, had perfectly created the circumstances to foster such intense hatred in a child. Thomas Moore had once said, "If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them."

When the very rights of every man, woman, and child are placed beneath the priority of money and the values and traditions any society holds to be important, then of course human suffering will be the result.

The underlying problem was that the same society, laws, and traditions that created Voldemort were the very same that were bringing up every other child alive, and this is what made Hermione frightened. Of course, not every child who was a result of abuse and neglect was destined for evil, Harry was a prime example, but was it worth the risk to simply trust in the established system?

Kingsley Shacklebolt may be Minister now, he might have a higher level of approval and likeability from the public, he may be stronger and smarter than Cornelius Fudge; he may be kinder and possess far more humility than Rufus Scrimgeour, but he simply wasn't the system, he was only its figurehead. Could they really be sure that every member of the Wizengammot, every single person who worked at the Ministry, people who had actively sought their positions of power, would be held accountable for their own moral standards? The answer was no. Any kind of bureaucracy that would willingly employ people like Lucius Malfoy and Dolores Umbridge was already sick no matter who headed it.

Hermione knew that history would only repeat itself until humanity learnt the lessons provided to them. She also knew that defence was not the answer, tighter laws, fewer options, more regimented control over the wizarding polulation, these were all things that would only compound the problem. No, the answer was kindness, understanding, and wisdom, from a government that ultimately embodied love rather than power. But where could that be found?

She mentally shook herself. These thoughts did not go anywhere. She might have some vague idea of what the wizarding world needed to heal itself but no real ability to implement it. Thus, worrying about it only served to stress her.

What was it to her today anyway? This autumn day, walking down a relatively healed Diagon Alley next to a mentor she admired whom had her best interests at heart, going to see a flat that was in such a wonderfully perfect location Hermione could hardly prevent herself from running towards it. Perhaps it would be better for her to simply be present in that moment, when she was surrounded by things to be happy about, even if the thought of Ron and her trauma were still niggling at the very back of her mind. The larger issues of the wizarding world always paled in comparison to her own concerns if she were honest with herself. She knew that this probably meant she was a rather selfish person, but the truth was the truth.

Hermione made a conscious choice then to simply _be_ and take in what was around her, regardless of whether or not that made her selfish.

They passed Eyelops Owl Emporium and the body of sound it emitted of screeches and squawks and scuffling. She reminded herself to buy an owl when the opportunity arose. They passed a witch with a beautifully elaborate tree tattooed up her arm. Hermione avoided a puddle of frogspawn congealing on the cobblestones as they walked past the apothecary. She smiled at the loud sign of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes poking up over the roof of Ollivanders, ignoring the twinge of sadness and regret it produced in her heart. Her eyes caught sight of Draco Malfoy exiting Quality Quidditch Supplies examining a sheet of parchment held in his hand.

 _Wait._

 _Draco Malfoy?_

Hermione was so shocked at his presence in Diagon Alley, or in fact his presence anywhere other than Azkaban, she stopped walking abruptly, causing McGonagall to pause a few paces ahead and look at her inquiringly.

"Hermione?"

She did not answer, entirely because she was so thoroughly overcome by her own shock and incredulity. She was looking at a known Death Eater, someone who had the Dark Mark on his arm, who had knowingly _chosen_ to do Voldemort's bidding, who had adopted his puritanical view of the world; and he had been allowed to walk free? Hermione knew that his family's fortune had saved his parents incarceration from being splashed across the papers but it certainly hadn't _prevented_ their imprisonment. So how was he here? In broad daylight? Doing, of all things, his _shopping_?

In the intervening moments, McGonagall it seemed had followed Hermione's gaze.

"Hermione..." she said again her voice so stern and full of warning it almost made Hermione cower from her.

This barely concealed reprimand confused Hermione almost as much as seeing Malfoy free. Shouldn't McGonagall be just as shocked and angered?

Before she could respond however a familiar, jovial voice cried out behind them both.

"Ah! Headmistress! Doing some last minute shopping?"

"Professor Slughorn," said McGonagall turning her attention to him and smiling. "Hermione and I were just going to view her new home."

"Oho! Miss Granger!" cried Slughorn delightedly and Hermione flicked him a quick smile, her attention remaining on Malfoy who was still standing a few metres from them staring at the sheet of parchment in his hand.

At the sound of her name shouted so loudly however he lifted his head and caught her eye. Hermione scowled and, fully expecting him to return her venomous look with an expression of smugness or condescension, was shocked to see that upon catching sight of her he looked nothing short of panicked.

Hermione barely had a moment to register this before he dashed quickly into the crowd and disappeared from view. He had _fled_ from her presence.

"Returning to Hogwarts this year I hope, Miss Granger?" asked Slughorn good-naturedly, oblivious to her preoccupation, and Hermione was forced to give him her attention.

"Yes," she answered with a tight smile.

"Good, good," he boomed, "Naturally, I will be throwing the occasional soiree in my quarters as usual. Just a few select students. I hope to include you on my guest list?"

"Yes, of course sir," Hermione replied automatically.

The older man smiled down at her fondly and, after exchanging a few last minute pleasantries with McGonagall, left them to their business.

The two of them continued walking in silence, Hermione's mind churning with thoughts of Malfoy and Death Eaters and the war. She wanted to express her feelings of indignance and confusion to McGonagall but after the older woman's sternness, felt too uncomfortable to do so. The energy between them had become tense and strained.

Soon enough they reached Flourish and Blotts. Hermione stared into the recesses of the dark, familiar shop in front of her, then cast her eyes upwards. There was a small balcony jutting out over the street.

"I assume that must be the flat," said McGonagall, following her gaze.

They entered the shop together, the aura of the place wrapping itself around her like a hug, and found herself immediately confronted with Mr Flourish as he seemed to materialise suddenly behind the counter.

"Hogwarts, eh? Year?" he barked through his handlebar moustache.

"Seventh, but-" she began.

"Right. Well I've got a copy of _The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 7_ right here, but I'll have to get the others from the back," he said and made to retreat through a door in the back of the shop.

"Mr Flourish, I believe you were expecting us," said McGonagall briskly, appearing behind Hermione.

"Oh yes! Yes!" He hurried around the counter and grasped Hermione's hand in both of his. "Such a pleasure! My, I didn't even recognise you! Such a pleasure to have you here!"

Hermione laughed nervously. "Thank you Mr Flourish, really, I couldn't be more grateful, I-"

He waved her off and began to hobble towards the back door. "Don't give it another thought. Now follow me, follow me. It's just through here."

He led her through the door and into a vast room full of books and boxes. She inhaled the familiar scent of fresh parchment and couldn't help but smile, all thoughts of Malfoy and the war temporarily driven from her mind as excited anticipation beat in her chest. This was certainly her place.

They picked their way through towering piles of literature towards the back of the storeroom where there could be found a small spiral staircase that led to the floor above, which Mr Flourish began to climb with Hermione and the Headmistress in tow. The shiny red paint that covered it, flaked off in their hands.

"I remember the first time you came in here, I do," the shop keeper began to ramble over his shoulder, "Always took great pleasure in books. Tells you a lot about a person, I think. Young people are too careless about books these days. Sad, very sad. But not you! I think you'll be plenty happy here. Of course, I'm happy to have you, after all you've done. Wouldn't be here if it weren't for you and your friends."

Hermione felt her stomach clench but tried to ignore the sensation. She always found it hard when others tried to praise her efforts in the war, she didn't know why. The praise was difficult to respond to, she never knew what to say and usually chose to remain silent, as she did in this instance, which made her even more uncomfortable.

At the top of the red and flaking spiral stairs, they came out on a dark little landing, lit by a single candle in a votive on the wall, with nothing on it but a door. Mr Flourish produced a great set of keys from the folds of his robes and opened the door with a heave.

Hermione and McGonagall followed him into the dusty and dimly lit flat and already the potential of it leapt out from every corner despite its neglected appearance.

A set of old wooden double doors led from the lounge room onto the balcony they had seen from the street, hidden by heavy, dark green curtains that blocked out all but the merest slivers of light. The room itself was small but with a deliciously high, slanted ceiling and faded wooden floor boards. A large, old couch sat by the wall like a cat reclining after a large meal, with a weather beaten wooden coffee table in front of it. The floor was swathed in an impossibly huge Persian rug, threadbare in places and covered in patterns that gave the room a regal, sophisticated air. Hermione had always coveted Persian rugs. By far the best feature of the room however was the vast wooden bookshelf that spanned the entirety of the opposite wall, hugging a small, blackened fireplace. Hermione shivered in excitement as she went over to run her hands over the dark, stained wood and Mr Flourish it seemed couldn't help but notice her enthusiasm.

"I'll warrant it won't take you long to fill that up eh?" he said and she grinned in response, resisting the urge to jump up and down in excitement. "This here's the living area," he went on, "the front door's a bit dodgy, you've gotta give it a bit of a heave to get it open. The kitchen's just here."

Hermione followed his gesture and made her way through into the cooking area as McGonagall poked her head around the entryway to see for herself.

"This may need work," said the Headmistress doubtfully.

But Hermione shook her head, grinning from ear to ear, "No, just a clean. It's perfect. It's all perfect."

The tiles that spanned the floor were a rich, dark blue, dulled by dust, some cracked and loose. The cupboards under and above the small bench top all looked at risk of falling off at any moment, and the sink was dusty and scratched. In the corner sat more shelves and a modest pantry, all in all it was not a room blessed with space, but it suited Hermione's needs and tastes perfectly. A small window with a chipped frame that looked out over London sat on the wall opposite the entryway. Hermione wandered over to it, staring out into the busy street, bustling with muggles. She felt as if she were on the cusp between the wizarding world and the muggle one, with her balcony looking out over Diagon alley and her kitchen looking out to London. It felt right to her, like that was just where she belonged.

"Well I'm glad you like it," said Mr Flourish, snapping her out of her contemplation of the kitchen, "It's been mighty hard to find tenants for this place."

Hermione couldn't imagine anyone who would not love such a wonderful, character filled space.

"Oh really? Why?"

The shopkeeper cast a wary eye at McGonagall before he spoke. "It's right on the dividing line, see? You can hear it, makes a bit of a buzzing noise. It's from the enchantments that keep Diagon Alley hidden from the muggles."

Hermione stopped and listened for a moment and indeed she could hear and feel a faint buzzing, but it felt soothing if anything, like a rotating fan in summer that stayed on all night simply because the silence if one turned it off would be too jarring. Hermione had always liked to sleep with a fan on when she lived at home.

"Does the buzzing bother people?" she asked curiously.

"Oh no. It's not the buzzing. Most folk are suspicious you see? They think it's bad luck to sleep on a dividing line. Like having one foot in and one foot out. Not that an educated person believes in that sort of nonsense."

Hermione laughed. She wasn't generally suspicious and the wizarding world had many eccentricities that she found silly so she wasn't entirely bothered by this information. McGonagall however seemed slightly annoyed by the conversation and just as Hermione was going to question the subject further, the Headmistress cut her off somewhat sharply.

"May we see the bedroom, Mr Flourish?"

"Of course, Headmistress," said the shopkeeper, sounding strangely embarrassed or frightened, Hermione could not tell which. On the whole however, the short exchange on the subject had piqued her interest. She would read up on Dividing Lines when she could.

Mr Flourish gestured for them to follow him again. "The bedroom is through here."

He led them out of the kitchen and through a tiny hallway leading off the living area to the only other room in the flat. The ceiling in here was also high and slanted and large picture window sat on the wall opposite the door, this too shrouded in heavy, dark green curtain, looking out to Diagon Alley. The room was mostly taken up by a large four poster bed and an ornate wooden wardrobe and nightstands to match. She discovered that a door in the corner led to a small but equally charming bathroom, bedecked with the same rich blue tiles.

After inspecting the room thoroughly, Hermione turned to Mr Flourish, looking hopeful and enthusiastic, and McGonagall, looking doubtful and sceptical.

"I love it," she said simply.

McGonagall made to speak but before she could, a large orange blur leapt out from under the bed and tried to claw its way up Hermione's leg.

The squeal that followed was one of pain and delight. "Crookshanks!"

Mr Flourish laughed, "Oh yes! I'd forgotten all about him! Arthur Weasley dropped him off here not an hour before you arrived."

Hermione must have looked confused as she scooped her cat up into her arms.

"I have been in correspondence with the Weasleys regarding your situation," McGonagall told her, "I did not want to cause them unnecessary worry."

Nodding uncomfortably, Hermione felt that she did not want to begin to contemplate what that may imply, specifically whether Ron now knew where she was or if he would try to come and see her.

The three of them, Crookshanks in tow, made their way back out into the living area.

"So, home sweet home!" the shopkeeper said happily, "You won't want for much, but you might have to buy your own cooking things. Other than that," he pulled off two keys from his huge set and dropped them into her hand, "There you go, this one opens your door and the big one opens the front door of the shop."

"Is there an apparition point set up on the landing?" McGonagall asked, her tone business like.

Mr Flourish looked embarrassed, "Ah, no. I wasn't too sure how to go about doing that…"

"We will have someone from the Ministry come out to take care of it," the Headmistress said. "Now, as to rent…"

The shopkeeper cut her off, "There'll be no need to talk about that just yet," he turned to Hermione, "once you're back at Hogwarts and settled into your classes, you can work weekends down in the shop. But you get yourself comfortable first, then we'll talk about it proper."

"That's very kind of you Mr Flourish, thank you!" said Hermione breathlessly, happy at the thought of working in her favourite bookshop, but also glad to have a rest before she was required to do so.

The shopkeeper waved off her praise, said a hurried goodbye to Professor McGonagall before hobbling out the door and closing it behind him.

Her Headmistress turned to Hermione wearing a formidably serious expression.

"You needn't stay here if you do not want to, Miss Granger."

"No, I do really like it, Professor!" Hermione assured her.

McGonagall nodded curtly. "Would you like help making it… habitable?"

Hermione shook her head, "No, thanks Professor. I'm looking forward to doing it on my own to be honest."

"And your belongings? Do you require assistance collecting your things from the Burrow?"

Again, Hermione shook her head. She patted the old and tattered beaded bag that hung at her hip. "It's all in here."

"Well then," said McGonagall with an air of finality, "If you can think of no more use for me then I shall return to Hogwarts and I will see you within the fortnight at the start of year feast."

The Headmistress made to let herself out but after a moment's hesitation turned back to Hermione and laid a hand on her arm. "Do write to me if you feel in any way unhappy or lacking… I am here to help," said McGonagall, her tone uncharacteristically gentle.

Hermione could do no more than nod and smile gratefully as McGonagall let herself out.

The front door closed with an air of significance. In the silence that followed, she felt grateful for the hum of the dividing line, it made that silence less complete or threatening. For just a moment she felt suddenly frightened of this unfamiliar place, though she had fallen so in love with it at first sight. The dark and the dust now began to feel ominous, lonely, and neglected.

She walked over to the double doors and threw open the curtains, bathing the room in golden, afternoon sunlight. The warmth of the light made her feel marginally better. The afternoon was pleasantly warm so she opened the balcony door wide followed by the kitchen window.

Hermione found herself casting her eyes around, suddenly lost for what to do, where to begin, and almost overcome with a wave of lethargy.

Crookshanks slunk of out her bedroom, meowed imperiously, and bounded onto the couch. Hermione took off her beaded bag, laid it with a loud clunk on the coffee table, and cast a quick ' _tergio_ ' to clear the fabric of excess dust and dirt. Then, she joined him, allowing the soft, voluptuous pillows of the couch to hug her body. She felt thankful for the sound of Crookshanks purring, the hum of the dividing line, the throb of traffic drifting through her kitchen window, and the chatter of witches and wizards through the balcony door. It all combined to be just loud enough to make her feel less alone.

Without intention, she soon fell into a deep, comfortable sleep.

Hermione awoke later that night to the smell of rain on asphalt. Upon inspection, her watch told her it was eight o'clock.

For a moment she could not remember where she was, the room was dark and cold and the noises coming from the streets bellow, once so comforting now felt alien to her sleep addled mind. At the Burrow, all that could be heard at night was the wind in the trees, the owls hooting dolefully, and the soft chirping of insects. In her new home she could hear many distant voices mixed with occasional burst of laughter, as if there were a restaurant or bar nearby, the traffic, the buzz of the dividing line.

Hermione groped in the pocket of her robes for her wand and muttered a quiet, " _lumos_."

The darkness scattered before the eerie blue light cast by her wand which she set down on the coffee table beside her.

She stretched slowly, her mind moving sluggishly from sleep to wakefulness. With it unfortunately came the dream she had been having.

Less a dream than a memory, really. Since the war Hermione had noticed that this often happened. Where once her dreams had spanned the gamut of what could be considered normal content, odd and irrelevant, they now consisted mostly of memories, experiences she had had over the course of her life. In her dreams, she relived her past. This was rarely a happy occurrence for now even her most pleasant memories were tinged with sadness.

This dream had been, like so many others, about Ron, about a night they had spent together many months ago after the war but before he had _changed._

It had been hot that night, the air slightly heavy with humidity. Unable to sleep, Ron and Hermione had gone for a walk in the fields surrounding the house. This was a common occurrence. As the house was so full, it was hard to ever get a moment alone together. Ron and Harry shared a room just as Ginny and Hermione did. Sometimes it was necessary for the young couples to seek out more private surroundings, and the dark, windswept heat of the hills was the best they could do.

During these strolls, Ron and Hermione never did talk about the war, or the hunt for the Horcruxes. Even then Ron seemed to feel as if there were not much to say on the subject, it had been so thoroughly dissected and recounted already. Hermione felt the opposite, like there was so much she wanted to say about how she felt that she didn't know where to begin.

The lights and colours of the final battle still fizzed through her mind like sparklers when she was sleeping.

Consequentially, they walked in silence that night, occasionally breaking it to banter playfully, as they so often did. But the discomfort Hermione felt at that silence was minor, overall she felt happy to simply be with Ron, to feel his skin on hers as they held hands.

"You know Harry and Ginny are most likely copulating in your bed right now?" Hermione had said with a quiet laugh as they crested a small hill.

Ron snorted, "Bloody hell, Hermione, don't sugar coat it or anything. I was trying not to think about it!"

Hermione giggled, "Yeah well, it's not like you and I wouldn't take that chance if we had it. Maybe I should convince Ginny to bring Harry out for a moonlit stroll sometime?"

Ron shrugged, "Nah, it's our thing," he gave her hand a light squeeze, "It'll be good when we've got our own place though."

"What makes you say that?" she giggled, playing dumb.

He grinned cheekily, "Well I reckon you'd make a really good housewife, and you're not exactly reaching your fullest potential here in that area."

He flinched even before she had raised her fist to punch his arm playfully.

"Ronald! I am _not_ a housewife!"

"Ow!" he laughed and rubbed the tender spot where she had hit him, "You're getting bloody good at that, I don't know whether to be proud or scared!"

"Scared, I think. Anyway, I've been practicing. How else will I keep my househusband in line? What colour do you want your apron, dear? Magenta or lilac?"

Ron chuckled, took her hand again and drew them both to a standstill. Together they stared out at the rolling, moonlit hills. She felt giddy with the romance of it all.

He turned his face into her hair and said quietly, "Love you."

She looked at him. He didn't often say that to her. "I wasn't expecting that."

He shrugged and smiled.

"I love you too Ron," she told him.

Hermione tightened her arms around him and pulled him into a kiss.

The fact that he responded didn't shock her back then, the fact that she could feel his smile and his stubble on her cheeks, it wasn't a surprise. When they'd lay down together in the grass, when their hands would scatter across each other's bodies, not quite sure what to do but sure that their hands were entirely necessary, when they were joking and laughing and entwined through their heavy breaths, none of it felt wrong or out of the ordinary. It just seemed as if that was the way it should be, that after all they'd been through of course they could have that easy, giggling contentedness to hold them afterward.

There were no insecurities to cloud Hermione's mind, to make her afraid or angry or ashamed. She just felt _loved_.

To feel that way, to be so totally sure of it all, then to suddenly find that Ron, to whom she had given all of her trust, could no longer muster even an expression of concern when she was going to leave him felt totally beyond the limits of her endurance.

Lying on an unfamiliar couch, in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by cold, blue wand light, Hermione suddenly felt, for a few moments, that she couldn't possibly bear it. More than anything she hated that the memory of his hands and his kisses had made her body respond, that she was lying there in that unfamiliar place feeling discarded and alone and aroused.

Hermione sat up and pushed it all away, shoved it deep into her mind where she didn't have to look at it. She felt that there was no point, no purpose to feeling so horrible. She was exhausted by it.

With a wave of her wand, the lanterns around her flat were lit and this marginally improved the lonely feeling that had seeped into her. The candlelight was roseate and warm. It also served to remind her of how much needed to be done before she could really go to bed. Though the inviting light of the lanterns made the flat feel more human, more hospitable, it also threw into focus the heavy layer of dust that blanketed everything.

Over the proceeding forty-five minutes, Hermione must have cast _tergio_ at least twice as many times. Though it was not a spell in her arsenal she felt particularly attached to, she felt slightly proud that by the end of her whirlwind clean through her new flat, she was noticeably better at it. Once everything from the floors to the ceiling, her bed, her bathroom, her kitchen cabinets, and her fireplace had been thoroughly cleaned and purged of all dust, grime, dirt, spider webs and mould, she felt elated that she could finally begin the part to which she had been most looking forward.

Feeling significantly better, Hermione sat down on her couch and drew her beaded bag towards her. It took her well over two hours to relieve it of its contents, but once she had, the flat felt more like home that the Burrow had ever done. There when the small ceramic green elephant had sat on Ginny's desk, it had looked like it was placed there temporarily, complacently, but as it sat on the nightstand next to Hermione's bed in her flat, it simply looked at home. The same could be said for the small crystal hanging from her kitchen window, the addition of her shampoo, conditioner and soap to the shower, the many, many books that now adorned her expansive, though nowhere near full, bookshelf.

As Hermione began to get down to the last few items at the bottom of her beaded bag, a familiar tapping sounded from her balcony doors. Looking around, she saw a handsome screech owl sat outside with a letter tied to its leg. She stood up bemusedly, let it in, and relieved it of its burden before it shot back off into the night.

She sat down on her couch and unfurled the parchment.

 _Hey Hermione,_

 _Dad told me where to find you._

 _I was wondering if we could have dinner? You're only just around the corner now and I wouldn't mind the company._

 _Let me know,_

 _George_

Hermione stared at the page in her hand in bewilderment. George and she had never been particularly close and he had always seemed so closed off when he had been around the Burrow, it had looked like company was something he purposefully avoided, let alone desired. She felt touched that he'd reached out however, as much as she felt confused by it. She also felt frightened of spending time with him, he was Ron's brother after all, and he was a connection to the source of her heartbreak. That was both terrifying and hugely tempting.

Hermione pushed the thoughts and the letter away to be dealt with later and turned her attention back to her beaded bag. Reaching her arms in she pulled from its depths, with much grunting and straining, an old and shabby record player, complete with an equally shabby and ancient gramophone. These objects were closely followed by a wooden crate she knew to be filled with records.

These items had been sitting at the bottom of her beaded bag for a very long time. The silence at the Burrow had felt so complete, so heavy that it was almost as if putting music on would have been a thoroughly unwelcome nuisance. It would have sounded sharp and jarring at the Burrow.

These were not the only reasons for keeping the record player hidden away however. The records, the gramophone and the player itself had all been the only items Hermione had inherited upon the death of Remus Lupin. This in itself was strange as it seemed only logical that Hermione would get his defence books, but those went to Harry. Perhaps Lupin had thought she had enough books, perhaps what he thought she needed was more music in her life.

However Hermione had never tried to use it, had not even wrenched open the crate and perused the records. It seemed unlikely that Lupin would have anything she would like. She had never really grown to enjoy wizarding music, she didn't know why. And being at Hogwarts, that was all she really had access to. The only music she had been exposed to had been that which her parents had played her as she was growing up on school holidays.

Hermione purged her beaded bag of its remaining contents before turning to the records. With little else to do she pried open the crate and tipped it onto the floor. The sleeves slipped and slid across the Persian rug.

As her eyes raked over the titles she could see, she found herself immediately surprised and delighted for most of the records bore labels she recognised, and consisted of very little wizarding music. There was Beethoven and Billy Holiday, PJ Harvey and Air, Tchaikovsky and Bob Marley. There was a record that boasted two hours of Mongolian throat singing, and another that consisted entirely of flamenco guitar favourites. Hermione found as she flicked through the pile, that there was no record that did not enchant and excite her. She wanted to listen to them all at once and felt in that moment a huge and overwhelming sense of gratitude that Lupin had given her this gift, almost as if he knew that one day she would find herself alone and in need of comfort.

As she reached the bottom of the pile, Hermione came across a record that was more familiar to her than any other. Her heart gave an extra hard thud in her chest. She picked it up reverentially, slid the disk out of its slip, put it onto the record player and placed the needle on the outer ring.

 _"_ _I need an easy friend,  
I do, with an ear to lend,  
I do think you fit this shoe,  
I do, but do you have a clue?"_

The music filled her space exquisitely and she felt a shiver thrill through her body as suddenly, her flat seemed to glow with a new light. Where before everything had seemed grey and empty despite all the cleaning and unpacking she had done, it now felt alight and alive. Hermione began to sway with the music, still staring down at the empty cover in her hands. _Nirvana: Unplugged in New York._ Her dad had been there for that concert, he had flown over to America while Hermione was at Hogwarts, he'd told her all about it when she came home for the holidays, he'd played her the CD over and over and sang along. He'd had such light in his eyes as he'd recounted the memory, he'd seemed so elated.

When he got back, she'd give him the record. It would be a homecoming gift. He didn't have it in vinyl. He'd like that.

Hermione stopped swaying.

 _When he got back._

But he wasn't getting back. Not unless she went to get him. Not unless she undid the memory charm she'd placed on him a year a half ago. Did Wendel Wilkins even _like_ Nirvana? He didn't sound like he did, he sounded like the kind of man who listened to BBC radio 4 and went golfing on the weekends. He sounded like the kind of man who covered up his tattooed arms and brushed them off as foolish decisions made in his youth. What if he'd had his tattoos removed? She'd always liked that her dad was a tattooed dentist. What if now he was just a dentist?

What if her mum had removed her tragus piercing and thrown out all her old books on women's lib? What if she'd stopped going to art galleries and started going to medical conventions? What if she didn't like mushrooms anymore? What if she stopped trying to force Hermione to eat them?

What if they weren't them anymore? What if Hermione had botched the memory charm and erased Nina and Barry Granger forever?

She'd forgotten her rule never to think about her parents. She'd forgotten about how she'd pushed all those feelings and memories deep into the recesses of her mind. She didn't talk about her parents, she didn't think about them, she didn't feel about them.

She'd broken that rule.

Hermione pulled the needle off the record with a violent scratch. Her hands were shaking. She scooped Crookshanks up in her arms and, leaving the records scattered across her living room floor, fled to her bedroom. She climbed, fully clothed, into her four poster bed and clutched Crookshanks to her stomach. For a moment he struggled and pushed against her arms with his paws until it was as if he sensed her need for him and calmed.

Hermione's new flat might look nice in the light of the candles, it might have a nice view and she might like the blue tiles in the kitchen; but it wasn't home. It didn't have a green walled kitchen with a light scorch mark on the ceiling from when she'd accidentally left olive oil in a hot pan. It wasn't filled with the scent of her mother's shampoo and perfume. There was no glimpse of her name written in rose vines over her father's back, no laughter over her mum's obsessive cleanliness when she insisted on ironing her pyjamas, no half-finished game of trivial pursuit on the dining room table. No mum. No dad.

It was just her.

In that moment Hermione felt entirely hopeless.

She was alone, and she was going to be alone for a long time. She had a whole year at Hogwarts in front of her and for those 365 nights, she would be entirely alone in this flat. Unaccompanied, unaided, isolated. If she died, no one would know. She could lie bleeding in her bathtub for days before someone found her. No one to talk to, no one to fight with, no one to pat her hair and tell her she was beautiful and kind and clever and she would be ok. At least at the Burrow she was part of a collective feeling of grief and misery where her thoughts were occupied obsessing over her relationship with Ron and what was going on with Harry. But she had no friends anymore, it was just her.

Hermione didn't know what to do with any of that feeling. She didn't know where to put the hurt. She couldn't just sit it on her nice new bookshelf and leave it be. It was just so entirely _there_ , all around her, within her, it was everything she was about right then, it was her whole identity.

And so for the first time in a very long time, Hermione cried the sort of tears that rolled slowly down her cheeks, soft crying, quiet crying, the kind of crying that came from a deep feeling of hopelessness and sadness and loneliness.

And that was all she could do.


	3. Chapter 3 - It's a Fire

CHAPTER 3

IT'S A FIRE

 _"_ _This life is a farce, I can't breathe through this mask like a fool, so breathe on little sister, breathe on."_

The morning that followed that first night had felt to Hermione imbued with new light and new possibilities. As hard as it was to push all of those feelings of loneliness away, she knew that she simply couldn't maintain such a state of abject depression. Her melancholia came in waves, hitting her suddenly and unexpectedly in a moment of weakness and passing as soon as she found an adequate distraction. Hermione tried her best to keep herself distracted and stocking up her new flat with everything she needed and wanted certainly provided that.

She had filled her cupboards with pots and pans, crockery and cutlery, stocked up her pantry with all the food she could desire, even bought herself a small owl that she had christened Sev because he was all black and wore what looked like a permanent scowl.

Every morning she sat herself contentedly with toast and tea on her balcony where she hungrily devoured page after page her recently acquired school books, as well as the few interesting tomes Mr Flourish had given her in a burst of congenial generosity. Every night she would cook herself a nice meal and read more whilst exploring Lupin's records. All in all her days mostly consisted of reading, she found there was little else to do outside of actually leaving the house and she felt that the trips out to buy supplies had thus far proved to be quite enough for her.

It was in the afternoon of her fourth day at her new flat that she decided to finally reply to George's letter which had been glaring at her expectantly from the coffee table. Though the possibility of seeing him frightened her slightly, she also found herself craving some human contact and conversation after four days of total solitude.

 _Hey George,_

 _Sorry it's taken so long for me to reply. It was just nice to be alone for a few days._

 _I'd love to have dinner with you though. How's tonight? Around seven?_

 _Hermione_

She stared down at her note for a moment before using her wand to replace _love_ with _like_. She walked over to Sev's cage and tied the note to his leg.

"This is for George. He lives a few doors down in the shop with the ridiculous decor, ok?"

Sev hooted indifferently and took off through her open balcony door.

Hermione then threw herself in the shower wherein she fought in vain to comb the tangles from her hair. After dressing she wandered into the kitchen and begun to rifle through her cupboards for the required ingredients to make George and herself a stir fry.

At ten past seven Hermione was startled by Sev soaring through her balcony door and landing on the tiles at her feet, a note attached to his leg. It had a single line of writing.

 _Hermione, how the hell do I get up to your flat?_

She rushed out onto her balcony to see George standing in the street, grinning up at her.

"Oh! Sorry! I'm sorry!" she cried, "I'll be down in a sec!"

She scooped her keys up off the coffee table and heaved open her door, flew down the spiral staircase, through the cavernous storage space and into the darkened shop. She opened the front doors and George stepped in.

"Sorry George! I completely forgot about that!"

He grinned at her and threw an arm around her shoulders familiarly as they headed back through the shop.

"You must be beside yourself, living above a bookshop," he said with a grin.

Hermione shrugged and returned the smile. "It does have its advantages."

George laughed.

She led him back up the spiral stairs. "Someone from the ministry is supposed to come and set up an apparition point on the landing, I'm not sure when though, I haven't heard anything. I didn't know they could do that, but I suppose it makes sense," she rambled nervously as she heaved open her front door and led him into her flat.

George was nodding and looking around. "Yeah that's what we've got for the flat above the shop," he said absent-mindedly.

She noticed his use of the word _we_ instead of _I_.

"Feel free to look around," she told him, "I'll make us some tea."

Hermione left George in the lounge room and set the kettle on to boil. It was only then that she noticed her hands were shaking.

Seeing George again was proving to be an entirely different experience to what she had expected. She felt vaguely aware that his scent, so like Ron's and yet so different, had swept over her in their greeting and that had made her stomach churn. Having a man touch her after what she suddenly realised was much more than four days of no human contact had added to that sensation. But above all, George's general demeanour made her nervous. Seeing him at the Burrow over the last months had always left her with a feeling of hopelessness, he seemed so hollowed out, so bereft, so totally and devastatingly sad. Yet this person she had just allowed into her flat was none of those things. She could certainly still sense the heaviness of grief around him but it was nowhere near as dense as it had been.

All those times she had passed him at the Burrow over the last months, Hermione had not seen him smile once yet now, he seemed to find smiling easy.

"Maybe he's on drugs," she said quietly to herself with a wry grin, "Maybe you should be encouraging him to share."

When she returned to the lounge room, two steaming cups of tea in hand, Hermione found him thumbing through her record collection. He glanced at her over his shoulder.

"This is a really neat collection, Hermione. I didn't know you liked half this stuff."

She sat down on the couch. "I don't. Well, I mean, I don't know yet. I haven't listened to most of it. It was Lupin's. He left it to me, remember? You can put something on if you like."

He nodded and pulled a record out of the pile, rubbing his sleeve over the disk before placing it on the player.

George turned to her and smiled, "I hope you don't mind this? I love Bob Marley."

Hermione shook her head as he sat down on the couch beside her and picked up his tea, taking a sip.

"I always thought it was funny Lupin left you that," he said lightly, nodding towards the gramophone

Hermione nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, I know. I sort of thought if he was going to leave me anything it would be his defence books. But Harry got those."

"I guess he figured there's probably not much in them that you don't already know," he smirked.

She laughed. It was probably true.

"So you're going back to Hogwarts for this year?" George asked.

She nodded, feeling like her tongue was heavy in her mouth, as if conversation was something she had left behind, something she had forgotten how to do. "Yeah."

He grinned at her, misinterpreting her expression of discomfort. "I bet you're champing at the bit to be back. Only you, Hermione could see three more days of holidays as a bad thing," George chuckled, "Where's your shiny prefect's badge anyway? Shouldn't it be displayed in a crystal cabinet?"

Hermione let out a shy giggle. "No! I'm not a prefect anymore."

"Oh ok, so where's the safe you're keeping your Head Girl badge in? Is it behind the bookcase?"

Hermione laughed. "No, I'm not Head Girl either."

"A scandal!" exclaimed George in mock horror.

She waved it off good naturedly. "No, it's fine. I'd prefer to keep a low profile and just focus on my studies this year."

"Yeah like you've ever had a problem with that!" he grinned at her again and raised his tea to his lips.

Hermione felt a rush of unease, caused not only by her finding the act of conversing difficult, but also at George seeming to find it so easy. He was just so thoroughly changed, she could hardly make sense of it.

The smile fell from her face as she leant forward and placed a hand on his arm. "George, are you ok?"

He adopted a confused frown. "Yeah, why?"

Hermione retracted her hand and clutched at her cup of tea despite the fact that it was burning her hands, her stomach knotting as it dawned on her that she had inadvertently driven the conversation into potentially risky or upsetting territory.

"It's just..." she began haltingly, "At the Burrow, you seemed really down, which was totally understandable of course, but you're so different now. I mean, I didn't see you smile the whole time you were staying there. I don't get it."

He shrugged noncommittally, but Hermione could tell he was uncomfortable. "Neither do I to be honest. When I was there I felt like shit, and every time I go back it's the same. I just get… I get really tired and numb, it's horrible. But then I leave and after a bit I feel fine."

"It must trigger something…" Hermione suggested.

"I guess so," he responded, shrugging.

They sat in silence for a moment, the light heartedness that had hung around them slightly dissipated and heavier.

Hermione took a deep breath and sat up a little straighter as if she was steeling herself against something, without quite knowing what.

"It's been different for me too," she said.

"Yeah?" George said, his tone interested and serious.

She nodded. "Yeah. It's like… everything was so confusing there, it all felt kind of, I don't know, foggy? I always felt anxious and like I couldn't manage anything."

"Like you were always tripping over? Like every conversation, everything you tried to do was sort of a failure?" asked George, looking at her intensely.

"Yeah! Exactly! Like, I didn't feel sad or depressed or anything, it was more I didn't really feel anything very strongly at all when, now that I think about it, there were sort of lots of things to feel strongly about."

"That's exactly how I felt," George told her.

Hermione could feel her nerves trembling, could feel the pressure that sat on her chest as she opened up. It frightened her, but it also felt pleasurable. She could physically feel herself releasing.

"Then when I left and stayed at the Leaky Cauldron it was like everything just sort of _fell_ on me!"

George shook his head, looking amazed. "Seriously, that's exactly what happened to me the first time. And it sort of happens every time I go back. The moment I apparate out of there it's just like suddenly everything becomes sharper and more intense. And fresh. Everything feels fresh again."

A look of incredible pain crossed his face and silence fell on them. Hermione didn't know what to say.

After a few heavy moments, words fell out of her mouth before she could stop them.

"How do you fix it? How do you start to smile again?"

She asked this because she didn't know the answer herself, because despite all the distracting she'd been doing, every day still felt like a burden, a struggle. She hadn't been smiling. She hadn't been crying either, not since that first night, but she realised then that not crying wasn't quite the same as possessing enough happiness to be able to smile properly, with her whole heart.

George shrugged at her question and it seemed as if a grate had fallen over his eyes. "I dunno."

The conversation had come to a close, Hermione could sense that. And if she were honest with herself, she felt almost grateful. The brief glimpse she'd had of lightness and release was enough and felt close to overwhelming.

She sipped her tea.

"Have you been back since you left?" George asked after several silent seconds had passed.

She shook her head. "No. Have you?"

"Yeah, a few times. I was there last night," he responded and his expression was suddenly worried and anxious.

Hermione frowned. "What? Has something happened?"

George looked unsure. "Well... I don't know. Not really… Sort of."

"What does that mean?" she probed, her heart thudding a little harder in her chest for a moment.

"Nothing's changed really it's just… It's Harry, I guess," he said, sounding unsure.

"What do you mean 'you guess'?"

George looked uncomfortable. "I don't want to worry you Hermione, but he's just gone a bit... odd."

Hermione relaxed a little. "Well that's nothing new. He's been 'odd' since the final battle."

George narrowed his eyes and stared fixedly at the cup of tea in his hands. "Has he though?"

She opened and closed her mouth a few times in total bemusement before saying, "What do you mean? Of course he has."

George shrugged, still staring at his mug as if intent to avoid her gaze. "I suppose… Honestly, I just don't know if that's true though. If you think about it, he hasn't been like this the whole time. He seemed pretty ok for the few weeks after the final battle, he actually seemed like he was on the up, don't you think? Then he just sort of… stopped."

Hermione cast her mind back to the memories she had been so intently avoiding, the memories of the war's immediate aftermath. When she thought for a moment, she could see the truth in what George was saying. Harry _had_ seemed happier and getting better. He'd been talking about going into Auror training, about travelling around the world with Ron, Ginny, and Hermione. They'd been friends still. Then he'd started having those melancholic episodes, times when he seemed incredibly tense and irritable, quick to anger, or sad and thoroughly without hope. At first those episodes lasted an hour or so, then it had stretched into days.

The final conclusion was that George was right. Something had gone wrong somewhere with Harry. Hermione's view of him had been so coloured by the way he'd been most recently that she'd completely missed it.

"I can see your point," she conceded, "But you make it sound like he's gotten worse…"

"I don't know, _worse_ might not be the right word for it," said George, "He's started leaving the house."

"Oh well… that's a good thing isn't it? He hasn't left the Burrow in months…"

George looked unconvinced. "Well maybe... But he's leaving in the middle of the night. And he won't tell anyone where he's going. Not even Ginny."

"Ah," Hermione nodded. A whole conflicting array of emotions were rising up her throat. She felt powerless and confused, and so worried that she felt sick to the stomach. But she also felt abandoned. Harry was her best friend in the whole world, only he wasn't anymore.

'Well," she said with a sigh, "There's not much _I_ can do about it, is there? I mean, Harry's made it quite clear that he doesn't want anything to do with me. I… I don't think there's anything I can do."

George grimaced. "I wasn't saying you should do anything, Hermione."

She did not respond and instead got to her feet, making her way into the kitchen where she began to prepare their dinner.

As her knife sliced cleanly through a brilliantly red capsicum, thoughts whirled around in her head like a storm. On the one hand, despite her words to George, she was feverishly trying to find some sort of solution, some way she could help Harry. This proved fruitless. On the other hand, over and over again Hermione kept trying to tell herself that Harry was fine, he was totally fine, he was just a little messed up, but he'd get through it. They were all messed up and they all had to get through it. He was fine. He had to be. She couldn't _do_ anything!

She slammed a cupboard door closed with unnecessary force and the clap it produced echoed around her kitchen and jarred her ears.

For all she knew he could be saving small children from the clutches of escaped death eaters, but he could also be suicidal or hurting himself in some way. She had no way of knowing and no way of finding out and the overwhelming powerlessness that she felt made her furious with Harry for putting her in this position yet again.

In her first year she and Ron had helped Harry through the protections surrounding the philosopher's stone. On the outside it had all looked so very heroic and valiant and brave, but Hermione had had to sit alone in that chamber full of eight foot high chest pieces, with no way out, for hours before Dumbledore showed up. Ron was unconscious and so cold Hermione thought he might be dead.

In her second year some unknown entity had been moving through the school picking off muggleborns one by one, every corner she'd turned had been frightening, every time she left her bed she had felt afraid. For a whole year she was terrified.

In her fifth year she had followed Harry's whim, his intuition to go to the department of mysteries, had been seriously injured when she fought beside him in the battle, had taken weeks to recover from her wounds. In her sixth she had attempted to protect the school from Death Eaters, trained killers, while Harry had gone off with Dumbledore. Only last year she had gone into hiding with him, giving her whole life and safety over to searching for the Horcruxes, endured innumerable traumas as a result, stuck by him when Ron left and broke her heart, saved his life from Nagini in Godric's Hollow, been tortured for forty excruciating minutes by Bellatrix Lestrange, had ridden on the back of a dragon out of Gringotts and into the Final Battle… and not once in all the years she'd sacrificed for him had Harry asked her if she was ok, not once had he seemed remotely worried about her. She was always the one who worried, the one who looked out for _him_.

For him, she had sent her parents away. She had _purposely_ damaged their minds in order to stop them being added to the list of people who died for Harry Potter.

She could see Thestrals now.

Abandoned was how Hermione felt right then. Abandoned, worried, and resentful. She felt powerless knowing that there was finally nothing she could do after eight years of always trying to do _something_. Harry had shut her out, but that was not the only reason for her helplessness. She also knew that she herself had nothing left to give, that she could not abandon _herself_ again for him. Yet she still felt thoroughly obligated to do so.

In her mind was a tug of war and Hermione could not decide which side was right and which was easy.

George found her in the kitchen then, furiously slicing vegetables. He squeezed past her and deposited their empty mugs in the sink.

"Hermione?"

She didn't trust herself to respond. For all the anger and confusion boiling away inside her, she also felt that it wasn't actually ok for her to be having any of those emotions. She felt ashamed that she wasn't moved only to seek Harry out and help him. With George staring at her so intently, Hermione felt thoroughly self-conscious in her rage.

George leant past her and carefully took the knife out of her quivering hand. She let him.

"Hermione, I know you can't do anything. That's alright. I wasn't trying to say you should. It's not your job to do anything. Harry's a grown man, he needs to learn to look after himself."

"Which he's clearly not doing," Hermione spat, her voice shaking.

George nodded. "I know, but you've got to let it go. What's the point? We both know you're not going back to the Burrow, you're not going to try to see him or talk to him, because for some reason you just can't bring yourself to do it."

Hermione looked at up at him, knowing that his uncanny insight into her feelings must be because he shared them.

"So just let it go," he finished, "Why torture yourself?"

This was all very logical, Hermione thought, but it was easier said than done. It often seemed to her like men had an easier time of pushing things away than she did. The knowledge that she needed to let it go was all very real and very much present in her mind, but that didn't translate to that deep understanding that would fix her feelings on the subject.

"You're not having a very good time, are you?" George said suddenly.

Hermione looked at him. Her tongue quivered on a response, her breath hanging in her throat ready for it. But which response? She could go either way. Her face could fall into sadness, her head could rock side to side as she acknowledged that no, she wasn't having a good time and she found it hard to believe that she ever would again. Or she could shrug her shoulders, she could laugh, she could uttered that most hallowed of phrases _I'm fine_.

Her breath hung in her throat.

Then, in a split second, it rushed out, then back in, quick and sharp, and again. Not because she had settled on her response, no, but because George was very close to her in that tiny kitchen, close enough that she could see the freckles on his nose, the dark flecks in his blue eyes.

The record in the lounge room scratched and stopped, plunging them into a silence that seemed to stretch, warp and twist around Hermione's reality.

She just wanted to reach out to him, just wanted to touch him, because it had been so long since she'd been touched properly, lovingly. She wanted to be loved. Her loneliness was so complete all over her life the past few days, like she wasn't herself anymore, because herself had always been defined by the people around her, the people that she cared about who cared about her. It had felt for a long time like there was no one like that for her anymore. She was just alone.

And George's chest, an arm's length away, promised all the warmth of another person's skin, warmth that could travel along her nerves, up through her muscles and into her brain and tell her she was being loved.

Hermione just wanted to be loved.

In the silence, they stared at each other. There was something in the way George was looking back at her that didn't seem to be only concern or ambivalence or, if she were honest, particularly platonic. The reaction she had to that image was so fleeting that thought played no part in it. Fear and a strange feeling of elation welled in her heart and up her chest, making her heart palpitate whilst an inexplicable jolt shot through her abdomen and a sweat broke out on her palms.

Her breath seemed to thud in and out of her body.

Then, she turned away, shaking her head, and put it all down to a loss of control, a moment of insanity. "I'm such a mess."

She couldn't look at George like that. It wasn't right.

Her fingers found the knife again and busied themselves with cutting up more vegetables. She heard George let out a scoff behind her, and it sounded as if it came more from nervousness than anything else. The atmosphere felt incredibly tense and Hermione knew very well why, felt sure that George knew too, but could not think of a single thing to say to lighten it again.

Her mind could make no sense of the past few moments.

George appeared by her side and took up a knife of his own to help. Without a word they stood side by side, shoulders almost pressed together and prepared dinner.

For the following half an hour they spent in the kitchen, the only words that passed between them were trivial and unsubstantial and Hermione felt almost as if she were anticipating the moment when they had finished eating and he would leave. It had all just been too hard, too uncomfortable. She wanted to go back to being on her own.

She felt afraid that she might look at him again and see what she had seen before, George as a man, with a man's body that could make her feel loved.

They sat down to dinner at her coffee table. Hermione put on a record quietly to break the silence.

"This is really good," George told her as he shovelled the food from the plate to his mouth in a way that reminded her painfully of Ron

"Thanks," she responded.

The atmosphere had become agonizingly uncomfortable. She found herself questioning why she had even agreed to this dinner. The two of them had probably never even been alone in a room together before tonight, if they were friends it was only really by association in that they were close to the same people, or because they so frequently shared living spaces.

The bottom line was that Hermione was not now, nor had she ever been close to George. They knew next to nothing about each other. They had nothing in common.

She supposed the best way to disarm the uncomfortable silence around them would be to simply begin to ask him about himself, but where could that lead to aside from a place of pain? He and Fred more or less shared a life, what questions could she ask him that didn't directly or indirectly involve Fred or the war?

Hermione cast around inside her head for something, _anything_ , to ask him that would steer the conversation into easier territory.

Finally her mind landed on something, a topic that could not possibly lead back to the war or their collective grief.

"Are you seeing anyone?" she asked lightly.

George paused in the midst of chewing and looked at her bemusedly. "What?" he responded, cheeks bulging.

"Are you… you know, dating?"

He made a sound that was half choking and half laughter. "Why?"

Hermione shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "No reason, just making conversation."

He shrugged. "Well, yes and no, nothing serious."

She nodded.

"What about you?" he asked, grinning, "Any irons in the fire?"

She rolled her eyes and snorted cynically. "Oh, you know me, beating them off with a stick…"

He grimaced, "That probably doesn't feel too great."

"What?"

"Being beating off with a stick. I find that hands are so much gentler and probably less likely to draw blood."

Hermione let out a laugh that filled her whole belly before saying, "Well, I guess it depends how you're doing it!"

"Oh no!" George cackled, hands clutching at his sides, "No! Don't even go there!"

Their laughter filled the room for a moment and it seemed that once they had begun, they could not stop. Their humour felt uplifting and easy, there was nothing difficult about laughing and joking and Hermione felt thoroughly in love with that moment. Her body felt lighter than it had done in a long time, like it had been craving this, just a simple joke to bring out a release of sound and feeling that wasn't sad or heavy.

She allowed herself to laugh.

And from that moment, the conversation flowed freely. For almost an hour they talked of nothing important, nothing of consequence. More than anything, they laughed at themselves, at the silly places their minds took them. They laughed at their own human frailties. Really, they laughed at their own suffering, which felt at once counter-intuitive but also freeing. It felt good to acknowledge that in their pain they did, said, and felt some strange and ridiculous things. And that was ok, if looked at in the right light, it was funny.

Hermione knew that it didn't mean that she'd always find it funny, it didn't mean that when she was in those moments of pain she would be able to smile at it, it just meant that for this short period of time she could take a step apart from it and make it light.

"So there was one night," George was telling her as they reclined on the couch together, nursing cups of tea, plates empty and abandoned on the coffee table, "There was one night I was out walking in London feeling totally sorry for myself and I went into this seedy pub and I saw this thing, I think it's called a tevelision?"

"A television," Hermione corrected him.

"Yeah, that. Box with sound and pictures and stuff. Anyway, there was this woman on the box wearing pretty much nothing saying that I should call her and… I don't know! It seemed pretty obvious that it had something to do with… making sex…"

Hermione hooted with laughter, shaking her head, already guessing where George was going with this.

"So at first," he went on, "At first I thought it was directed specifically at me, but the pub was full so, I don't know, I got all confused. Anyway, I was feeling so shitty I just thought, fuck it, I'm up for trying something new…"

"Oh no…"

"Oh yes, Hermione! She kept saying 'call me', and I guessed I connected that to those telephone things, I mean, I did pay a little bit of attention to muggle studies, so I wrote down the number on the box, totally determined, and went and found one of those little houses with the phones in them… what are they called? Phone house… thing…"

"You're thinking of a phone box," Hermione told him, chuckling, before realisation dawned on her, "Oh no… you didn't call a phone sex line from a phone box, did you?"

"Well, yeah, but you're getting a bit ahead of me here because I had to work out how to us it first! I kept trying to just dial the number but nothing happened, so I looked at the heavily graffitied instructions which said I needed to put money into it to make it work, but I didn't have any muggle coins. I swear I stood in that thing for over an hour with my wand trying all different charms to get it to work and nothing did. In the end I pulled out a galleon and shrunk it so it would fit in the little slot…"

"And did it work?" she exclaimed, rapt in his story.

He nodded smugly, "Yep. It did. I spoke to a lovely woman named Destiny who moaned a lot and talked about doing a lot of quite lovely things to my nether regions."

Hermione covered her face in a mixture of embarrassment and amusement. "Oh no! That's crazy!"

"You're telling me! I don't think I've ever felt more pathetic in my whole life!"

Together, they fell about in a fit of laughter. Hermione knew that the aftermath of that experience had probably felt quite bad for George, that he'd probably felt down and ashamed of himself, but right then that didn't matter. It felt important that they both take that moment to laugh at these things.

"Talking about pathetic," she hiccoughed, "Get this. When I left the Burrow and I was staying at the Leaky Cauldron, I would literally spend hours walking backwards and forwards talking to Ron as if he were there. Like, I'd have full on arguments with him."

George guffawed gracelessly, "I've so been there."

"Seriously! I don't know how I managed to find that much to say! But it was like it was the only thing I could do that would keep me from going absolutely insane!"

"One might argue that doing that meant you were already insane!"

Hermione giggled, "Anyway, so there was one morning when I was in full swing, having an intense and impassioned discussion all on my own when there's a knock at the door and it's the cleaning lady. She tells me that she's been round the past few mornings but it always sounded like I didn't want to be interrupted, so she let it go, but she really did have to come in and clean the room now!"

George nearly fell off the couch laughing.

"You should have seen the look on her face when I let her in and she saw I was the only one in there! I've never seen anyone clean faster!"

"I can imagine," he chuckled.

She grinned and looked down at her empty cup. "More tea?"

He nodded and handed her his mug.

Hermione felt relieved that everything was going smoothly between them again, but this was partially because she was refusing to think about the conversation they'd shared when he first arrived and certainly refusing to think about the moment in the kitchen that followed it. She was quite literally keeping her thoughts as far away from it all as possible, choosing instead to let herself be thoroughly in the moment because in that moment she felt happy, she didn't want to talk herself out of that feeling.

She set the kettle on to boil just as George appeared in the entrance to the kitchen.

"Have you heard from Ron?" he asked and Hermione almost visibly shuddered.

The feeling that fell on her then was almost like whiplash.

"No," she responded tightly.

"Sorry," said George sympathetically, "I didn't meant to upset you…"

"It's ok… I'm just trying not to think about it."

"You can talk to me, if you like," he said, looking concerned.

Hermione turned and leant on the counter, arms folded. She sighed.

"I wouldn't know what to say, really. Honestly, sometimes I don't even know if I really feel hurt by it, by him. Sometimes I think it's just the rejection that stings rather than any real kind of love… I mean, it was the heat of the war, you know? Maybe we just got sort of… swept up."

"I never really understood it to be honest."

Hermione stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"You and him… it just always seemed so unlikely."

She shifted uncomfortably, feeling a little defensive at George's honesty. "In what way?" she asked, somewhat sharply.

"Well… he was never very nice to you all through school. Sometimes it looked like you only liked him because he was so unavailable."

Hermione spluttered ungracefully. "Well that's… I mean… He wasn't that bad… I just…"

George looked apologetic. "I'm sorry, I know it's not my place to comment. He's my little brother and I guess I'm sort of fond of him," he smiled, "But he's shallow and stubborn and… well… he's nowhere near as smart as you, not just school wise but emotionally, and he hasn't ever seemed to really value you."

Hermione could think of nothing to say. The information George was laying in front of her shocked her as it felt at once unequivocally true but also far too painful to even confront.

"I reckon," George went on, "I reckon that the person you're in a relationship with should challenge you and make you uncomfortable sometimes because they're getting to you in a deep way, but they should also be your best friend. Does that make sense? Like, relationships shouldn't be easy, I think if it's easy, you're not doing it right, you're not going deep. But with Ron it always looked like there was a lot of challenging stuff without much friendship. He just wanted you to look after him."

Again, she said nothing.

He shrugged and scoffed, "What do I know, anyway? It's not like I've ever had a long term thing myself…"

"I had no idea you could be so erudite," she told him, her shock still evident in her tone.

He raised an eyebrow. "I don't know the meaning of the word."

Hermione laughed.

That silence was there again then. She turned away to keep making their tea, but again the atmosphere had turned tense and awkward.

She had never considered any of the things George had put to her, never considered that perhaps Ron was just not right for her. There was an understanding in her then that stepped aside from anger; it wasn't that Ron was a horrible human being not right for anyone, but that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't right for _her_. What was it in her that had always liked him? That had always wanted his approval? Growing up at Hogwarts had meant she was surrounded by boys, many of which were very nice to her and whom she got along fairly well with, so why was the one she picked the one who rarely treated her nicely? It was almost akin to her having a crush on Draco Malfoy or Crabbe or Goyle, which was ludicrous.

She could almost sense the understanding coming upon her. What made one ludicrous and the other desirable? Was it the fact that someone like Malfoy had been consistently horrible to her, making him easy to hate, whilst Ron had almost opened to her then closed over and over all the years they'd known one another? When she thought about it, it felt like Ron would be nice and friendly and she'd begin to feel at ease in his company, then something would happen and he'd push her away and be angry. She had never been quite sure where their friendship stood, it was so frail.

What was it in her that translated that into a craving that still lived on inside her? She just wanted Ron's love, his approval. When she thought about it, she just wanted him to tell her he loved her, that she was beautiful, that she was good enough.

A realisation hit Hermione then, like an oncoming train.

She had inadvertently made Ron the vessel in which she poured all of her insecurity, all of her not-good-enough feelings. She made him the holder of that, made him the cure.

Because really she had set it up in her mind, slowly over time, that when Ron chose to love her, it meant she could love herself.

She suddenly felt very dizzy.

"Are you alright?" said George, concern etching his words.

She didn't reply, but her body wavered.

George stepped forward and took her by the shoulders, leading her back into the lounge room where he deposited her gently on the couch.

"Just sit down for a moment, I'll get you a glass of water."

She sunk back into the cushions.

All of this felt so huge within her, this realisation, and she felt frightened. The fear came from the fact that though she now had the knowledge, she didn't know what to do with it. That craving was still there, the feelings themselves remained unchanged. She expected the knowledge to fix it but it didn't. What could she do?

She felt ashamed.

George reappeared and handed her a glass of water which she drank.

"Are you alright?" he asked again, sitting next to her.

"Yes," she responded in a cracked voice, "I've just… I've just realised something and… I don't know…" she trailed off.

He looked confused.

The feeling of dizziness and overwhelm began to ebb away and she felt, more than anything, tired. Hermione let out a sad chuckle. "Sometimes I wish that I didn't have to think about sex or love. Sometimes I wish I could be immune to it."

He nodded knowingly. "Me too."

"Tonight has been… intense," she told him, smiling, her expression exhausted.

He laughed. "Yeah, it has."

Hermione sipped her water, letting the silence wash over them for a moment. Then, she looked at him, her face full of all the sincerity she possessed.

"Thank you."

She said this because even though it had all been hard, and there was a large part of her that felt like she'd rather not have done it at all, she also knew, deep down, that this is what healing looked like sometimes. It was often veiled behind difficult conversations and feelings. But what George had said before was right, having relationships with people could be hard sometimes because they took you to a deeper place that you perhaps were not comfortable enough to go on your own. They pushed you there. That was what George had done for her that night.

But she also felt lost, bereft, as if something had been torn out from underneath her. She felt terribly lonely.

Hermione let out a sigh that came both from exhaustion and a tiny sense of hopelessness.

"Come here," said George, his voice full of kindness and understanding. He opened his arms.

She hesitated a moment before folding forward onto his chest and George embraced her. For a moment, her whole body slackened into him, almost went limp with relief. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been hugged. It felt so gentle and warm, so safe.

Then, a feeling of unease began to creep up the back of her neck. She suddenly became very aware of her hands on him, and his on her. She suddenly became very aware of what lay beyond the innocence of a hug, the simple touching and intimacy it involved. The exchange of warmth and heartbeats, the nerves that engaged in it, and the parts of her body that responded to it.

But she couldn't hug George like that. It wasn't right.

Before she could pull away, his hand was in her cheek, then under her chin, drawing her face upwards. Hermione thought very much that she wanted to pull away but thought was not the thing driving the vessel of her body right then.

George dipped his head and kissed her and it was like a car crash, jarring and extreme and terrifying.

Unlike a car crash though, it was exhilarating. The jolt she had felt earlier tore around her abdomen and between her legs like someone was punching her repeatedly in the stomach, a sensation that was at once like pain but also addictive and explosively pleasurable. Hermione kissed him back.

Together, the strength of their arms wrapped around one another pulled their bodies closer from their lips to their chests to their legs. They intertwined. They crushed themselves against one another.

After a moment of tangled writhing George pulled his lips from hers and whispered hoarsely, "Bedroom."

Hermione nodded and they stood up together, hand in hand, and almost ran into her room. For that brief moment that the contact was broken, thought began to hammer loudly on the door of her mind but she ignored it. They fell onto the bed.

She found herself on her back, all the power with him. He tore off his shirt, bore his torso, her breath hardened in her lungs, pounding up her throat. He wrenched at her pants and then they were slipping from her ankles, her feet pushing them away. He kissed her and kissed her, their bodies pressed so hard against each other she found it hard to breathe. She wanted to dig her nails into his back.

She knew they shouldn't be doing this, knew that the consequences wouldn't be good, yet the consequences didn't seem to matter. They were grey, foggy ideas that had nothing to do with what was actually happening. She was driven by lust, it had taken over everything within her, but underneath that was the fierce yearning for love and attention, for validation.

Hermione just wanted to be loved.

George's hand flicked over her bare thighs, pushed aside her underwear and his fingers slipped and slid inside her. She let out a set of short, sharp moans and her body buckled around his arm. He breathed heavily and groaned in her ear, on her face, thumb rubbing, fingers wriggling.

It went on and on, this writhing, snake like dance on her bed and pushed her closer and closer until suddenly his weight on her was gone, her body felt light, and his head was between her legs. Those short, sharp sounds kept jolting from her throat louder and faster.

Then, the explosion. Her body curled around her orgasm, the hardening hit her muscles, blood pulsing, sound gone from her throat, from the room, her senses died and returned and ebbed and flowed.

Her mouth bent around noises that descended from ecstatic keening into soft, humming, musical breaths.

George's body landed next to her, his panting, wet face pressed into her neck, his erection denting her thigh.

Hermione's whole body softened and the silence of it cocooned them for a moment.

Then thought broke down the door, flooded her mind, her whole body filled to the brim with a black and bottomless shame. The lust had been driven from her body with his fingers and what it left behind was clarity. The consequences loomed on her, casting deep, dark shadows on her mind.

What had she done?

She couldn't be with George like that. It wasn't right.

"Oh fuck. Oh god. Oh this is so wrong," her voice sounded high and childlike in her ears, full of pain and humiliation.

He grinned at her smugly, eyes still alight with arousal, "I know."

She shook her head and shrunk her body away from him, only then did he seem to understand.

"Shit," he whispered, his hands flying up to cover his eyes.

"You have to go," she told him, sliding down to the end of the bed and retrieving her jeans. "I'm so sorry, we can't do this. This is wrong."

He sat up. "I know. It's ok. I understand. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"

"It's alright," she said tightly.

He pulled on his shirt as she buckled her jeans.

"Should we talk or…?" he asked, face crumpled in what she interpreted to be the same shame she herself was feeling.

"No," she said bluntly, "We will it's just… not now… I'm sorry."

He nodded and stood as she sat on the end of the bed, her head in her hands.

"It's ok… I'll let myself out… I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean… I'm sorry."

He trailed off and then took himself out of the room. Hermione jumped as the front door closed with a bang.


	4. Chapter 4 - Iron

CHAPTER 4

IRON

" _I'm riding the heights of shame, I'm waiting for the call, the hand on the chest, I'm ready for the fight and fate._ "

Hermione changed her sheets, she cleaned the kitchen, it was like her first night, every surface had to be cleansed, only this time it wasn't practicality but emotional necessity behind her fevered whirlwind through her flat.

What she felt must have been close to panic, as if what she had just done was so despicably bad, her mind couldn't begin to figure out how to deal with it or fix it or even process it.

She waited for a tiredness to hit her, waited to become exhausted by her activity. After all, it was late, so late that the streets below her windows had gone entirely silent and the night hung still and deep around her, making her feel as if she were the only one in the whole world awake. But the lethargy never came. She scrubbed and cleaned all through her flat, even used her wand to individually repair all the broken tiles in her kitchen and bathroom, charm the peeling paint of her window frames to look like new again. And still sleep didn't come.

When dawn began to cast an eerie blue light over Diagon Alley and the distant buzz of traffic drifted through her kitchen window, Hermione felt no longer human. Her emotions were all that she was, thoughts had become disjointed and frayed. Rather than words and ideas she was thinking only in pictures and colours. Images of Ron and Harry kept sweeping through her psyche, Ron's face scrunched in concentration over a potions essay in the Gryffindor common room, Harry tying a letter to Hedwig's leg. Ron looking nervous with the sorting hat on his head. Harry blushing under the gaze of Cho Chang.

Through all of it she felt ashamed, over and over, the feeling of acute shame would wash over her like a slew of water, cold and unforgiving, drenching her.

All through the next day she was awake and aware and ashamed. How she passed that time, she didn't know. After the thorough clean her flat got the night before, it gradually sank into a state of chaos. She kept finding parchment scrawled with words she couldn't read but must have written strewn about her lounge room, books lay open and abandoned on her coffee table, five origami cranes sat on her mantel piece. It was almost as if her body were no longer her own, occupying itself without any awareness connected to what she was doing.

That night lay heavy on her and still sleep did not come.

Hermione sat on the back of a thestral, blood pumping, eyes popping in fear, curses flying over her head, clutching desperately at Kingsley Shacklebolt's robes. She tasted the bitter polyjuice potion on her tongue. Bellatrix's screams rang in her ears. She ran through a darkened forest, snow crunching beneath her feet, calling out for Ron as if he and only he could bring her back to safety and sanity. Her eyes welled and filled with tears as she stared at the inert, dead body of Harry cradled in Hagrid's arms.

Ron's scent engulfed her as he comforted her, she could feel his chest under her cheek, the safety and love singing in her heart as he opened his arms and offered her a safe place to grieve, his whole being telling her he would look after her, he wouldn't let anything else happen to her, she was safe with him.

And George's weight lay heavy on her body.

The dawn came again whilst sleep did not.

It was then that her mind slowly emerged into a strange and serene world of clarity. The flashing images and colour slowed and stopped. The feeling of shame throbbed through her, bled in her.

Hermione lay on the couch and watched the dawn crawl across Diagon Alley through her open balcony door.

Tears came then. They dripped down her cheeks, one after the other, no end in sight. She wept in a way that was almost entirely without sense, as if it were the only thing she could do now. Her whole body was filled with aching, thudding tension. She cried and hiccoughed and keened, her whole body in such a state of chaos that an unnamed, unidentifiable terror sat beside her shame.

And there was a thought then, a thought made up of very clear words. It said that she deserved her pain and discomfort because what kind of woman got off with her ex-boyfriend's brother? What had Ron ever done to deserve that level of betrayal? She'd betrayed him, she'd broken his trust. Ron would never love her now, would never tell her she was good enough. Because she wasn't, Hermione had proved that. Perhaps she'd never been good enough, because she'd always had the capacity to do this within her. Perhaps that's why he'd rejected her.

She felt so humiliated.

If she were so desperate for love that she had to take it from the first man who offered anything like a paled shadow of it then she obviously didn't deserve it.

Hermione didn't want to live anymore. The war had torn her apart too much, it had turned her into something she no longer recognised. There was no true part of herself left.

She noticed then through the haze of her tears that she was holding her wand. She lifted her arm and drew it's tip along the back of the opposite hand. " _Diffindo._ "

The skin split along the line she had drawn. Blood pooled in the wound and began to seep out. It was an experimental wound, her body yet again acting of its own accord.

Her hand fell back onto her stomach, her wand hung limp in her other fist. She stared at the ceiling. Tears dripped, slid, oozed down her cheeks.

Hermione lifted her wand again and pressed the tip to her temple, she pressed it in, pushed, hard, it hurt. The shame welled up through her body again, followed by grief, despair.

" _Crucio,_ " she whispered, voice cracking and shattering.

The spell had no immediate effect.

" _Crucio!_ " she wailed, the word bounding around the room, bouncing off the walls, the intent hitting her heart with a dull and painful echoing thud.

Nothing. No feeling, no pain outside of what she already felt.

The wand hit the floor with a clatter. Hermione curled into herself, folded her pain in her chest. She cried until finally, mercifully, she slept.

Hermione's head pounded. Light hit her closed, swollen and stinging eyelids.

A yowl filled the room and Hermione opened her eyes to see Crookshanks sitting in her bedroom doorway, staring at her intently.

She groaned at the pain thrumming through her whole body.

The light outside was golden and dim with a setting sun. Hermione rolled over and closed her eyes again, arms moving up over her head to block out the light.

Her cat meowed loudly again.

"Shut up, Crookshanks!" she croaked.

His weight hit her hip as he bounded up onto the couch. Hermione cowered into the fabric further. He kneaded her waist with sharp, needle like claws.

"Ow!" she exclaimed, brushing him off.

She sat up.

The flat was quiet, dust motes hanging in the air. Hermione looked around blearily, her emotions still sleeping within her. She looked down at her body and noticed with a start she was covered in flecks of dried blood, her hand was caked in it. She groaned again, feeling stupid, ridiculous, over emotional.

As the memory of the past few days began to trickle down on her after sleep, she shrunk under it, fear filling her heart.

That had all been so insane, the act of someone truly in need of real help. But Hermione didn't want to seek help. She wished she hadn't done any of it, could take it all back simply because she felt she couldn't deal with the aftermath of it. She should have dealt with it all much better than she did.

She felt hung over from it.

Her head pounded.

Hermione pulled herself from the couch, body swaying, legs weak, frame wavering. She stumbled into the kitchen and drank two full glasses of water before rifling through her pantry for a biscuit which she munched on, much as her stomach protested. She needed to eat, needed to refuel her feeble, grief stricken body.

What had happened to her? What had all that been about? Why had she taken such a dive? Why was her reaction so extreme? Hermione had never really dealt in extremes, she'd always considered herself fairly level headed. What had happened?

She dragged herself to the bathroom. In the cabinet above the basin she found a pepper-up potion and downed it in one. Relief seeped through her as the potion took effect and filled her with warmth. She began to feel close to normal again.

In the shower she scrubbed the blood and grief from her body, all the time fighting off waves of that same fear.

What should she do now? If anything, the last few days had shown her she wasn't ok. She'd thought she had been, that she'd been coping even if barely. But it was clear now she hadn't been. What should she do?

Stepping out of the shower, she stood in front of the mirror and inspected her gaunt, haggard appearance. She looked sick.

It was only when she drew her wet hair off her face that she noticed the bruise on her temple. It was purple and ugly, black tendrils lacing across her skin. She knew instantly that this was no normal bruise and a thrill of sharp panicked pounded through her chest for a second. Perhaps she'd just pressed her wand in just a little too hard? Yes, she did remember really driving it in there. That must be it. When she prodded it with a tentative finger, it did not hurt at all.

Hermione let her hair fall back across it and ignored the panic.

She made her way out into the lounge room again. The clock caught her eye and an unexplainable shot of alarm surged through her body. She studied the clock.

It was a quarter past five in the evening. A quarter past five. Monday evening. Monday the first of September. A quarter past five.

Realisation struck her then and she let out a little squeak of panic.

The start of term feast was in less than an hour.

"Shit!"

Hermione threw herself bodily back into her bedroom and dug her Hogwarts robes out of her cupboard, dragging them with some difficulty on over her still wet body.

She devoted several entirely wasted minutes to attempting to charm the bruise on her temple away to no avail. In the end she simply had to let her hair fall over it and remind herself through the evening not to tuck her hair behind her ear.

After throwing a few things into her beaded bag, Hermione hurtled out of Flourish and Blotts and up the road to the Leaky Cauldron at a quarter to six. Once she reached the court yard behind the pub, she turned on the spot into darkness.

Hermione apparated directly into a crowd of startled Hufflepuff fifth years who shrieked at her sudden appearance. The unexpected darkness at Hogsmeade Station compared to the daylight still hanging over Diagon Alley threw her for a moment as she got her bearings. The platform was crowded with students; the Hogwarts express having just arrived.

"Firs' years over 'ere!" came Hagrid's deep voice, bellowing over the crowd.

Hermione pushed through the throng towards the Thestral drawn carriages that would take her up to the castle and leapt for the first one available only to find it occupied by four Gryffindor third years.

She leant through the door. "Do you mind if I...?"

One girl with curly brown hair squealed and almost fell off her seat at the sight of Hermione who looked on in shock. The rest nodded enthusiastically and made room for her.

Hermione climbed into the carriage and sat down, feeling thoroughly confused at the younger students sitting silently in their seats staring at her with wide eyed awe.

A boy with dark hair and an olive complexion leant forward and said in wonder, "Are you… Hermione Granger?"

The girl next to him elbowed him in the ribs and gave him a reprimanding look.

Hermione nodded, perplexed, totally disarmed at this sudden development. Why on earth would thirteen year old boy know who she was?

"And what's your name?" she asked the boy, her voice betrayed her bemusement.

He blushed and mumbled, "Noah Williams."

The girl next to Noah held out her hand. "My name's Ebony. Ebony Laurence."

Hermione took the young girl's proffered hand confusedly. "This is Felix Leeton," Ebony went on, and the boy next to Hermione smiled nervously, "And Gypsy Worthington," the girl who had almost fallen off her seat giggled.

"It's… it's lovely to meet you all," Hermione said and then the carriage was filled with an awkward silence.

Noah glanced shiftily at Ebony before saying, in an undertone, "Is it true you broke into Gringotts and stole a dragon?"

Hermione shifted nervously, "Well, yes… but how did you know?"

Noah whistled appreciatively and Felix said, "Wow!" in an awestruck voice. Even Ebony seemed impressed.

"Didn't the police try and stop you?" she asked reverentially.

The two boys laughed. "She's muggleborn," said Noah by way of an explanation.

Ebony's mouth opened to retort angrily but Hermione cut across her. "So am I," she said simply.

Ebony looked smug.

Gypsy pointed at Hermione's left hand with a gasp. "What happened to your hand?!"

Hermione hastily shook her sleeve over the cut and shrugged, saying with what she hoped came across was complete nonchalance, "Got into a fight with a bowtruckle."

They all made sounds of admiration. Hermione felt embarrassed and self-conscious.

"Oh! I know what they are!" Ebony exclaimed, practically bouncing in her seat, "Professor Hagrid said we're doing them this year in Care of Magical Creatures!"

The carriage stopped at the front steps of Hogwarts and Hermione got out. She walked up the steps and into the entrance hall, the four young Gryffindors swarming around her, peppering her with questions.

"Is it true you fought a werewolf?"

"Did you really set a herd of centaurs on the Minister of Magic?"

"How many mountain trolls _did_ you take on in your first year?"

"Are you really dating Harry Potter?"

Hermione laughed uncomfortably, aware that she not only had the attention of these four but also of everyone she passed. All around her was whispering and pointing and staring. She knew now how Harry must have felt so often. But she didn't seem to have his stoicism with her in that moment, she felt thoroughly overwhelmed and close to panic, pressed into a crowd of people gazing at her raptly, like an animal in a zoo. Her feet almost turned to carry her right back out again but instead she was swept along with the crowd into the Great Hall.

Seeing it then froze the breath in her lungs. Hermione's knees felt weak. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the flashing of curse fire, she could almost hear the screaming. She shouldn't have come. All around her, people were staring, her body pushed and buffeted by the incoming crowd. Her tongue convulsed in her mouth, her heart pounding, her vision swam, she couldn't breathe. She stumbled yet people kept pushing. She could hear laughter. They were laughing at her. She was crumbling. They were laughing.

In her panic, her hand reached for her wand and drew it, curses tumbling through her mind, down towards her mouth, something to make the laughter stop, to get them all _away_ from her.

Suddenly a hand closed around her arm and yanked her forcibly sideways. She tripped in its wake. A body pushed her against the wall by the doors, out of the force of the crowd. Hermione caught a glimpse of white blonde hair, pale skin, before her hands flew up to cup her face. Her wand was taken from her hand and shoved back into her pocket. More laughter. She couldn't bear to look.

"Hermione!"

A familiar voice.

"What are you doing?" it demanded, and at first she thought that was directed at her until it added, "Leave her alone!"

A comforting hand landed on her back. "Hermione are you alright?"

She lowered her hands and looked up to see Neville Longbottom gazing down at her looking concerned and a little shaken himself.

She nodded. "Yeah, I just got… overwhelmed."

"Yeah, me too," he said knowingly, "Come and sit down. Ginny's here too."

"Oh god," Hermione groaned, thinking of George's weight on her again, but Neville didn't hear her as they made their way toward the Gryffindor table. She tried her level best to ignore the pointing and staring, lest it overwhelm her again.

Ginny caught her eye as they sat down. She looked both relieved and defensive.

"Hi Ginny," Hermione said warily.

"Hey," Ginny returned somewhat lamely.

Hermione studied her for a moment. She looked as bad as Hermione felt, there were bags under eyes and she looked pale and thin.

"Are you ok?" they both said at the same time then laughed.

Hermione felt a rush of affection for the younger woman and nodded, giving her a warm smile which Ginny returned. There seemed to pass between them an unspoken understanding that they were alright, that they'd do their amends to one another later.

Hermione settled herself on the bench, set her beaded bag on the table and allowed herself to look around at the Great Hall properly. It was as spectacular as ever. The damage from the final battle had been repaired and it had been restored to all its festive glory. A thousand candles hung suspended in the air above their heads and beyond, the enchanted ceiling reflected the clear, starry sky. She felt herself slowly sag, contented and relieved, into her seat. After all, it was good to be home again.

She cast her eyes up to the staff table and noted with small jolts of happiness the line of familiar faces. Hagrid sat talking merrily with Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick next to him. Professor McGonagall sat in Dumbledore's old chair, deep in conversation with Professor Sinistra. Hermione noted with a scowl that Professor Trelawney was sadly not absent and was perched on her chair at the far end of the table doing her best to look mystical.

It was all so comfortingly familiar and for a moment, Hermione could almost pretend the war had never happened.

Hermione saw Professor Slughorn waving at her enthusiastically and as she waved back, she noticed an unfamiliar woman next to him, conversing with Professor Vector, the Arithmancy teacher.

The woman wore deep purple robes embroidered with various symbols and patterns. She seemed to be in her early forties and had long, jet black, wavy hair that stuck out in odd peaks and angles. There was something exotic about her, she seemed to ooze wisdom and grace, yet there was something about her air or how she held herself that seemed somewhat intimidating.

"That must be the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher," said Neville.

Before Hermione could comment, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet and the buzzing hall fell silent as the students gave her their attention. The atmosphere was suddenly full of intention, full of purpose. It felt heavy.

"Welcome students, new and old. I cannot say how happy I am to be standing here in front of you all today," she began and it seemed to Hermione as if there was a sheen to her eyes.

"In the last two decades, our world has learnt many things," McGonagall went on, every word settling heavily on the silent crowd, "First and foremost that magic and power can be wielded by both the good and the bad, the great and the weak, the pureblood, the halfblood and the muggleborn. No matter your house, or your blood status, or your level of wealth, you are just as capable as the person sitting next to you of committing atrocities such as the world has never seen, you are also just as capable of healing, love and compassion. This year, following one of the most devastating wars of our history, it has become vitally important that each one of us finally decide once and for all what kind of world we would like to live in. It can no longer be about your house or your blood status, but about your heart. It is time for you to choose with your heart."

McGonagall regarded the students solemnly. The hall rang with silence for a moment.

"We must now choose to put prejudice behind us. We must be united in our intention to end this war, to embody love, compassion, and forgiveness. We must be united in our decision to _let it go_. It is time for us all to forgive."

A stirring murmur swept through the students.

"It is my intention this year to disintegrate the house prejudices. Let your houses become your family, yes, but I will no longer stand idly by and allow the four great families that make up this historic school to wage war on one another. We are all one consciousness, we share this home, this land, and I will fight to the day I die to unite us upon it. In the true vision of Albus Dumbledore."

McGonagall stood tall on the podium, her chest thrown out, her eyes alight with a passion Hermione had never seen in her before.

"Wow," Hermione whispered, a sentiment that seemed to be shared by all around her.

There wasn't a cheer, a whistle or even an applause – but a collective positive energy seemed to settle over the students. Hermione could feel it. For a brief moment, she had forgotten about her own problems, and began to remember the great things her, Harry and Ron had achieved in the last seven years to bring about change. She felt herself swell with pride.

"Now, we are to break from tradition," McGonagall continued, her tone more businesslike, "Before the sorting begins, we have a special guest who has bravely agreed to appear before you tonight. In the spirit of unity, please join me in welcoming a very talented young wizard… Draco Malfoy."

"HA!" Hermione let out a loud, involuntary laugh. Heads turned in her direction but she neither noticed nor cared. She felt sure that this must be some sort of joke made in extremely poor taste.

Her eyes widened as Draco Malfoy himself stepped up on to the raised dais the staff table sat on, where Professor McGonagall greeted him by shaking his hand. He smiled feebly, thanked her and stepped up to the lectern, his nervousness obvious as he placed a shaking length of parchment down in front of him. His breathing seemed shallow and the hands that clutched the side of the lectern showed white knuckles.

Yet Hermione felt no sympathy. Rage boiled through her body like fire. She couldn't understand how even he could stand up there, in the place of the headmaster he had helped to murder, in front of students whose families, friends, and peers had been murdered or traumatised by the man he had pledged a binding oath to follow. It was cruel, it was sick.

Hermione felt disgusted. If not for a burning curiosity to hear what exactly he thought he had to contribute, she would have stood up and left.

It seemed more than obvious to her that this must be some sort of ploy. The Malfoy she had grown up with could never leave humiliation and defeat alone, he always had to try to get his own back somehow. This was obviously his chosen action in pursuit of that, in pursuit of some sort of revenge or an effort to somehow return him to his former status so he could perceive himself as elite again.

She would not be fooled by him, no matter what he said, she knew who Malfoy was. She knew he was cruel and bigoted and malicious. To her, he was a lost cause who deserved Azkaban. That was her view and there would be no way she would change it.

Hermione looked around the hall at the various reactions displayed by the other students. None seemed particularly accommodating. Most looked defended and suspicious, many looked as furious as Hermione felt, Neville and Ginny among them.

Malfoy cleared his throat.

"My name is Draco Malfoy. I am a Slytherin and a Death Eater."

Many students in the hall gasped, whispers broke out.

He ignored the waves of animosity that seemed to be sweeping across the hall in his direction, barely contained within the crowd. He went on, raising his voice slightly above the noise, "I use these words in the present tense on purpose. I am a Death Eater. I say this because that ideology, that brotherhood is something I will have to spend the rest of my life recovering from, and making amends for. I am a Death Eater now because to bear that shameful moniker is that price I must pay for choosing it for myself two years ago.

"Up until the end of last year, I shared my living space, my home, with the Dark Lord and my fellow Death Eaters. During that time, I saw my own father commit murder as if it were nothing more than sport. I was subjected to the _cruciatus_ curse many times and forced, sometimes under the _imperius_ curse, sometimes not, to torture other death eaters and victims of the Dark Lord's displeasure. I am an adult now and I was an adult then. I take responsibility for my actions and acknowledge that, though I believed differently at the time, I _did_ have a choice. And I chose."

Malfoy paused for a moment as if to regain some lost composure. The hall had fallen silent again. His tone lowered. He appeared to be shaking and his eyes remained trained on the parchment in front of him as if frightened to look up and meet the eyes of his fellow students.

"I think to assume that the war was begun by a madman and his followers would be naïve and wrong. In my opinion, the war was begun by a corrupt society, stemming from a corrupt system, implemented by a corrupt government. We live in a culture of repression and disengagement. That which we fear as a larger community has always been that which we do not understand and as a result we have shunned, shamed, and misjudged those less fortunate than ourselves. We have devalued that which appears different and, most damaging of all, we have neglected to offer any real aid to those who need it most. Tom Riddle was one such person. But, though he lit the flame, he did not build the pyre. The larger culture of enforced silence and control built it. If we had been capable of embodying forgiveness, wisdom, empathy and compassion as a larger community, he would have had no fire to light.

"I hold this opinion not because I have been told to but because I have learnt through gruelling lesson after gruelling lesson. I have done my homework. As I looked out across the result of a war, as I experienced firsthand the trauma it created, I have become aware that there was something much, much deeper going on than anything I had previously considered. I grew up being fed pureblood ideals. I grasped them and held onto them, I _chose_ to believe them. If I saw any reason why they should not be true I chose to ignore it. I realised that this was solely because those ideals meant that I could be better than others and I wanted to be because I myself did not believe I was deserving of praise, love, or empathy without them."

At this, he locked eyes with Hermione. There was no smirk in his face, only open honesty and she could not hold his gaze. Her eyes dropped to the table, defiant, angry and underneath, shockingly ashamed.

"I will not deny that this time two years ago, I believed in my right to fight for a pure world because I had made that the same as my right to be myself and to be accepted. But never, did I believe that rape, murder and torture would be my weapons when it came to fighting. I came to my beliefs after what I thought was calm and sober consideration that led me into thinking I was doing right by the wizarding world. I thought that I believed us to be oppressed.

"The Dark Lord's name was praised in my home, we toasted to his return every evening when we sat down to dinner. Consequentially, up until I met him, I believed him to be a visionary and a hero. I hoped, always, that the time would come when I would be able to serve my Lord and make my own small contribution to maintaining the purity of our race and when he rose, I pledged him my service. I did not know then, what his new world would look like, or how ugly it would be. By the time I realised this, it was not my fanaticism for his cause that made me willing to kill for him; it was the knowledge that if I did not, I would lose my life. I was not given a say, first by my parents and then by Lord Voldemort.

"The only person who ever offered me a chance was Albus Dumbledore."

At this his voice became stronger and he finally seemed able to look up from the parchment properly.

"And now, I say this. To my peers, those of you who have been force fed those same prejudices by your parents and the Ministry: do not allow yourselves to be fooled by it. Look for the deeper reason. We have the capability to unite if only we were all willing to look for deeper meaning.

"The rest of the wizarding world was spared a true look into the world Tom Riddle would have created. I lived it for two years. I can tell you now that it was not the wholesome society he led us to envision. As a man, you were expected to murder and torture at Riddle's bidding and if you did not, he killed you, he killed the people you loved. As a woman you were sold to the highest bidder and married off to breed a new generation of death eaters and your daughters would be destined to the same fate. If you were not compliant, you were tortured and raped. I ask you, is this the world you would desire to live in?

"I am not here to convert you into sharing my opinions. If I were, I would be no better than Riddle. I am here to encourage you to do as I did not, to think critically, and to question what you have been taught because the system that forbids us from asking questions, not only robs us of our freedom, but also creates the perfect conditions for prejudice and bigotry to grow. I am here to encourage you to seek deeper meaning, to learn to forgive, not only others but yourselves.

"My promise to you tonight is that I will work to unite the four houses as much as my power allows. I will do my best to eradicate the prejudice I have spent the last seventeen years to trying to cultivate.

"Remember: a half blood, a pureblood and a muggleborn united to bring down someone who we long thought was the greatest wizard of all time. And they _succeeded._ "

Malfoy looked down at his hands and took a deep breath before he raised his eyes again to look out over the students.

"Thank you," he said before he stepped away, making his way back to the Slytherin table, leaving the hall in a shuddering, heart pounding silence.

When Hermione looked around then she saw only shock in the faces of her peers.

Professor McGonagall got to her feet and began to clap. She was soon followed by the rest of the staff and most of the students in the great hall. They applauded in Malfoy's direction, the noise rose to a cacophonous roar.

Hermione remained seated and did not clap. A battle raged within her. She believed him, the things he said, his speech had touched her deeply, just as it seemed to have done for every other person in the Great Hall. But she was angry, she was hurt, Malfoy had bullied her ceaselessly for seven years, he had made her life truly horrible at times, he had done so many hateful things, caused so much damage. She could only hate him.

He was in essence a horrible person, she felt this in her very bones, he could not possibly believe the things he'd said. Someone else must have written his speech. This was the only conclusion she could draw.

She could only hate him.

Neville leant forwards on the table as Professor McGonagall thanked Malfoy and announced the beginning of the sorting. He looked between Hermione and Ginny.

"So what do we think?" he whispered as the Sorting Hat sent 'Amis, Natalie' to Ravenclaw.

"I don't know," said Ginny quietly, frowning deeply.

Neville nodded, lifting his goblet to his mouth and turning to look at Hermione who could not bring herself to speak. The depth of her emotion was too great, she felt torn. More than anything though, she felt tired and sore. Her body was beginning to ache.

After the sorting was done, the food appeared on their plates and Hermione ate quickly and quietly, feeling that light hearted conversation was beyond her right then. Neville and Ginny were chatting good-naturedly with Luna Lovegood who had come to eat with them at the Gryffindor table.

Over the course of the meal, Hermione began to feel odd, off in some way, like her skin was crawling, like she was feverish. She guessed that this must be because she was simply overwhelmed by it all, everything she'd been through over the past few days and now sitting in the Great Hall as if her life was normal again.

An ache in her temple had begun to build and it throbbed painfully every time she moved her jaw.

Hermione started to feel worried. She knew very well that the ugly bruise had not been caused by the pressure of her wand alone. She also had a sneaking suspicion that the sick feeling she was getting was not unrelated. The time had come for her to seek help. She had no idea what she had really done attempting to cast the torture curse on herself. It was such a powerfully damaging spell, she could see there was no way that it had caused nothing but a bruise. She would have to ask for help.

And yet, the idea of actually admitting what she had done to herself, admitting the state she had been in over the past three days, and also the events that triggered it all felt hugely terrifying and humiliating.

Hogwarts had never really felt like it provided space for any sort of emotional unburdening. Hermione didn't actually know who she should go to for this sort of help. Who could she talk to?

Professor McGonagall was the only logical answer, she had after all been Hermione's head of house for the past seven years. It would have to be her.

Hermione waited through dinner until the great hall began to empty. She sat alone at the Gryffindor table pushing trifle around her plate as she waited for McGonagall to rise from her seat.

When the headmistress finally appeared to be bidding her colleagues good night, Hermione grabbed her beaded bag and stood. She made her way toward the staff table.

"Professor? Might I have a word?" Hermione asked politely.

"Of course," McGonagall nodded, "How can I help?"

Hermione cast a wary eye at the rest of the staff and gestured for McGonagall to follow her to the corner of the hall. The headmistress obliged, looking perplexed.

"It's just… I have an injury that I'm… that I'm concerned about," Hermione told her quietly.

"Should I fetch Madam Pomfrey?"

She shook her head. "No… it's not like that, it's just, it's this bruise."

Hermione turned her head and drew back her hair. McGonagall's hand grasped Hermione's chin gently as she studied the mark. Her eyes narrowed.

"What caused this?" she asked sternly.

"A curse," Hermione answered.

"I can see that," said McGonagall, "What kind of curse?"

Hermione let her hair fall back over her face and ducked her head uncomfortably. She couldn't bring herself to say it. She knew that she'd have to but it felt like a physical impossibility to let the words actually leave her mouth.

The headmistress stared at her expectantly, severely, waiting for Hermione to speak.

The seconds ticked by and her hands began to shake in her humiliation.

"I… I did it," Hermione said, so quietly that it seemed impossible that McGonagall would hear her.

The headmistress nodded curtly before she turned her head back toward the staff table and called, "Professor Vulpes!"

The dark haired witch Hermione had been studying before the feast lifted her head from her plate.

"Could you join us?" asked McGonagall.

The witch nodded and made her way over to them.

"This is Hermione Granger," McGonagall told her, "It seems she has an injury that I think you should look at."

"Show me," said the woman. She had a heavy, central European accent with a lilting, musical trill to it.

Hermione pushed her hair back again.

Professor Vulpes ran a thumb over the bruise before she laid a palm on Hermione's forehead for a moment.

"You are very warm," she said, then took Hermione's wrist and pressed her fingers to it for a moment. "Yes, I see. When did this happen?"

"I… I don't know," Hermione answered. The past three days were such a blur and she had slept for so long she could hardly be sure when she had actually cast the curse. "Last night? Maybe the night before?"

The professor nodded curtly. "You must come with me."

"Now?" Hermione asked feebly.

"Yes. Now. Wait for me in the Entrance Hall."

Hermione walked away leaving the two professors alone. She was grateful to find the Entrance Hall mostly empty.

She was feeling more and more feverish with each passing moment and had begun to consider walking straight through the front doors and going home. She felt foolish too, like a naughty child. But more than anything she felt frightened. It scared her that she had done this to herself, that she was even capable of it.

Professor Vulpes joined her quickly, looking very serious. She gestured for Hermione to follow her up the marble staircase.

"You will not call me Professor," she told her, "You will call me Teodora."

"Why?" Hermione asked nervously.

"Because this is my name."

Hermione started to suspect that Neville's suspicion may be wrong, perhaps this woman was simply a guest at the feast. "Are you a teacher here?" she asked.

"Yes. I will teach Defence Against the Dark Arts," the older woman answered, "But this is not important. You must be feeling very ill."

"A bit," Hermione responded carefully.

Teodora nodded and the short conversation ended. Their footsteps echoed eerily in the empty stone corridors as they made their way up to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.

Once they reached their destination, Teodora led Hermione through the darkened classroom, lit only by the pale glow of the moon, and into her office.

Hermione could do nothing but pause on the threshold in shock. The room was unlike anything she had ever seen anywhere, let alone at Hogwarts. She felt as if she stood at the brink of another country, another era.

The room was lit by the warm glow of candlelight and the burning golden light of the fire. Everywhere she looked there was colour, rich fabric hung from the walls and ceiling, every adornment in the room was bright and exotic. Instead of chairs, there were stiff cylindrical pillows on either side of a very low wooden table that must have served as Teodora's desk. The room hummed with magic and reverence, as if it were more a sacred temple than an office. The only thing remotely scholarly about it was the series of bookshelves and cabinets that spanned one wall, heaving with tomes old and knew and various ornaments and devices that seemed to shimmer in the roseate light.

"Sit," Teodora ordered, gesturing Hermione towards one of the pillows by her desk. She left the sanctuary of the doorway and entered the room, lowering herself onto the cushion.

Teodora produced from one of the cabinets a very shallow, very large bowl, at least two feet in diameter. The metal was bronze in colour, rich and glinting, the outside etched in tiny, unintelligible runes. She set this on the desk followed by a series of small boxes and bottles, cuttings from plants, and her wand.

Hermione stared at the bowl in confusion.

"It is a _cazan._ In my country, this serves as a cauldron, its shape means we can brew over a fire, on the ground, and the potion is very close to us so that we may become close to it," the older woman explained.

Hermione wasn't sure she understood what any of that meant.

"Why do you need a cauldron?" she asked curiously.

"I will brew a potion called _Rusine_. This will undo the damage of this curse," Teodora answered, gesturing to Hermione's head.

"So… so you know what caused it?" Hermione asked, her voice faint with alarm.

The older woman nodded soberly, "Yes, I do," she sat down opposite Hermione and handed her a small bottle. "Take this, it will ease your fever while I brew."

"How long will it take?"

"Several hours."

"Should I just come back tomorrow?"

Teodora looked faintly amused. "No, you must stay until it is done. It is important that you take this treatment as soon as possible. Also, we must talk. I will not allow you to leave my office unless I am sure you will do no more harm to yourself."

Hermione grimaced doubtfully. This woman was so severe, her words clipped and short, Hermione couldn't possibly imagine that she would ever be inspired to open up to her.


End file.
